


Orfeo

by deemn



Series: The Light in Autumn [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Rape/Non-con References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deemn/pseuds/deemn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma only wanted home.  She wanted it and she got it and she killed and dismembered a woman to keep it and now, instead of sitting home with her things and her family and her safety, she’s sprawled on her ass in her son’s mother’s house because everywhere else is wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Erebos

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t profit.  
> Also known as “Fuck you, Season 2.” FTL happenings through “The Cricket Game” taken into consideration. Storybrooke happenings through “Child of the Moon” taken into consideration. Everything else can go die in a hole.  
> Henry’s sleep medicine is from a world of infinite pharmacological possibility, AKA does not exist. Yay magic!
> 
> Many, many thanks to Kate for the read-through of "Dude, chill" assurances!

 

 

> It is like losing a year of your life.
> 
> To what would you lose a year of your life?
> 
>  
> 
> Afterward, you go back to the old place—
> 
> all that remains is char: blackness and emptiness.
> 
>  
> 
> You think: how could I live here?
> 
>  
> 
> But it was different then,
> 
> even last summer.  The earth behaved
> 
> as though nothing could go wrong with it.
> 
>  
> 
> _Landscape_ , Louise Gluck

* * *

The world goes to hell so she does what she does best.  She runs.

She stays long enough to watch that tubby guy from Game of Thorns—and how the hell he’s got any authority, she can’t figure out, because he’s the florist—demand the keys to the sheriff’s office from David, stays long enough to watch David hand them over and watch Regina get frog-marched into the building and watch the whole world go to hell.

Then David turns to look at her, and Jesus, that’s her _dad_ , and it’s too damn much.  It’s too damn much and her whole body telegraphs it, and he reaches out towards her and she runs.  Straight up Main—and at least she’s gotten used to running with swords strapped to her back—and past the loft, and there’s the Bug sitting pretty by the curb.  Just waiting for her.

She tries the handle twice before she realizes David must have driven it at some point; the doors are locked, and she pats herself down twice before realizing there are no keys in this jacket—the dark brown, with the fur and the hood, because bless Ruby’s soul, she’d seen Emma shivering even in the B&B—no keys, no ID, no nothing.

Fuck.

No, she’s Emma Swan, she can boost a car in less than two minutes, she just needs to find—she stops, holds her breath.  Henry’s school scarf is on the passenger seat, red end trailing on the floor mat, and she has to close her eyes and let her weight collapse against the car.  Because Henry, Henry, Henry.  Where can she go now that there’s a Henry?

She’s just _not ready_.  Not yet.  Not with wetsoftred _squish_ —not yet.  Five more minutes.  Five more minutes and then she can do this.  

So she walks.  Up Main, rock salt crunching under her motorcycle boots, and over to Castleton, over to Town Hall where the only car in the lot is that ’84 Benz with the flawless paint job.  It’s almost too much, but it’s also too relevant, too timely, and she goes to the car, tries the driver door and shakes her head when it opens.  Regina knows better.  She _knows_ Regina knows better, and from the interior of the car—recently vacuumed, no loose change, no empty wrappers or soda cans or bent straws or anything, not even a leftover glove—it’s just— _Regina knows better_.

Emma drops into the driver’s seat and lays her cheek against the rim of the steering wheel, looks at the upgraded dash controls and the glistening faux wood and how there’s the slightest scratch in the leather of the passenger seat, from the front left edge towards the middle.  She thinks of the office she’s never seen messy and the woman she’s never seen flustered and how goddamn _odd_ Regina looked, in Emma’s jeans and henley and hoodie and her own fitted black overcoat.  How _odd_ she looked, under arrest and just… done.

Emma closes her eyes and reaches down, hits the plastic panel beneath the steering wheel and smiles when it pops right off.  And then she laughs, outright and hollowly, because there’s a spare key taped to the inside of the panel, and it’s so damn _not_ Regina that it gnaws at her ribs.  She doesn’t want to know why Regina would think to avoid hot-wire damage to her car.  She doesn’t want to know.  There’s no time for that, so she just untapes the key and slips it into the ignition, can’t help but smile when the initial roar of the engine settles into a comfortable purr.  The Bug is never so cooperative.  She also treats the Bug like shit, so with the Benz, she watches the engine temperature gauge and only puts the car in drive once it’s settled two notches above cold.  

And then she asks herself where the fuck she’s going in October in Maine with no ID, no money, no future and too much past.

She drives to Mifflin because it’s the only thing that makes any type of sense over the burn at the bridge of her nose.  She’s never had a migraine but she thinks this is how they start: like an ice pick at the base of her skull and crawling pain all the way around her scalp to a dull thud between her eyes.  And that—between the eyes—she thinks of blood and brain and bits of bone, wetsoftred _squish_. She shakes it away, focuses on pulling into the curving driveway.  Not that refocusing does anything for her, because what is she going to do here?  Sit on the deck all night, until someone thinks to look for her in the least likely refuge of all?  _Cry_ about it?

She pockets the car key and goes straight to the back door, runs her fingers over the top of the door frame, lifts the mat, checks the plants near the door, and then remembers exactly whose house this is and that this woman is intentional with every single thing she does, but left the car doors unlocked.  So Emma tries the door: open.

Fuck.

There’s a single bowl and spoon in the drying rack next to the sink, no other sign of life in the kitchen.  No fruit on the counter, no used paper towels or flecks of flour or sugar or even a coffee mug.  She can’t fucking stand it, because—Jesus, even when Regina was baking a poisoned turnover, there was _mess_ , there was parchment paper and filling and flour and apple peel and Emma can’t stand in the kitchen for another minute.

The dining room, the living room, they’re all the same.  Even the den, and she has to linger in there, run her fingers over the neatly labelled drawers of toys and games, the top of the flat screen and the two game systems underneath.  The couch is brown leather and worn and has just the right amount of sag to each of the cushions, and there’s a large basket of blankets immediately to the left, just within reach.  She sits with her feet up on the coffee table—a big, modern chunk of wood, nothing like any of the other furniture in the house but so, so right for here—and looks around, at the pictures on the wall which all document Henry’s childhood.  Baby Henry in a photo studio, toddler Henry under the apple tree, a younger Henry at his castle and then again in the sand.  He looks happy in all of them—looks elated, in fact, like he’s always in the middle of saying “I love you.”

What nags at her, makes her stand up and start pacing, is that there are only two with Regina in them: Regina cradling an infant Henry, and a recent one—how recent, she’s not sure—of Henry, asleep on the couch, with Regina just at the edges of the photo, one hand reaching out to touch his forehead.   Her face isn’t visible, but something about the way her fingers are fanned out speaks of hesitance and familiarity and tenderness and Emma aches for that.  For those three words, for how her son has them and has had them his whole life.

She gets the hell out of the room.  The hall lights stay off because she can’t find the switch, and she’s so focused on not walking into the end table she saw before that she completely forgets to not walk into the curving study wall and lands squarely on her ass in the doorway.  It says enough about where her mind is when she simply sprawls where she lands, with her feet out in the foyer and her hair fanning out on the study rug.  When a wall is the fight she forfeits.

Henry is with Snow.  Regina is in jail.  She’s just killed Cora.  

She’s killed a woman, tonight.  She’s killed a woman, dismembered her body, and burned it.  She’s killed a woman because her son’s best chance said it was the only way and God help her, she doesn’t think she’d hesitate to do it again.

No—that’s not all of it.  She’s jumped worlds and fought wraiths and ogres and zombies and had the Lady of the Lake—who, as far as she’s concerned, is a low-budget Mystique—try to crawl into her skin and then suddenly back off and offer _the whole fucking world on a platter_.  If she wanted it.

If she wanted it—mockery.  She’s had her shot at the world.  She only wanted _home_.  She wanted it and she got it and she killed and dismembered a woman to keep it and now, instead of sitting _home_ with her things and her family and her safety, she’s sprawled on her ass in her son’s mother’s house because everywhere else is wrong.

Even here.  Even here is wrong.  Here smells faintly of coffee and lemon and wood smoke and she knows she doesn’t fit.  She’s too rough, she’s too sharp, she’s too coarse.  Everywhere is wrong; her son is in the wrong house and his mother is in jail.

It takes her about five minutes to sit up again, to look around and spot the phone on the side table.  She shuffles over to it on her knees, pulls the handset down and sits back against the wall, closes her eyes and tries to find the number she’d memorized when she first got here.  So many things are in the way—which berries are poisonous, how to bed down on young pine boughs, which sword grips best absorb the shock from delivering a blow, how to get a fire going when all the wood is wet—but finally, finally, she finds seven numbers in sequence and doesn’t give herself time to second guess.

“Granny’s.  We’re closing in fifteen, so if you’re calling in an order—“

“Ruby?”

There’s a flutter of static, like the phone’s almost been dropped.  “Em?  Where the hell are you?”

She sighs, looks around the study again.  Here would be nice.  Here, with ten years of Henry and little pockets of joy.  “Ruby, I need your help.”

* * *

She pulls up behind the diner and pushes up into park, eases off the brake.  The main lights are all off, but the back room is lit and there are three shadows moving over the blinds.  It doesn’t take long for it to be two, then one—the shortest one, so Granny, probably—and then Ruby’s bounding out the back door with her hair flying behind her and, bless her, two cups of coffee in hand.  

Emma has missed the _fuck_ out of coffee.

The door doesn’t bang shut with its usual triple time beat; David’s holding it open with one hand and staring, open-mouthed, at the Benz.  And then he tries a smile, lifts his hand from the doorframe and gives a little wave, just enough to mean _when you’re ready_ , and that’s her dad, and she tries to smile back but it just turns into a grimace.  She wonders if he’s going to buy a new tarp.  It smells like rain; he’ll need one soon.

Ruby opens the passenger door and Emma takes the distraction willingly, reaching for the white paper bag held out to her and offering a real smile when Ruby settles into the seat.  It’s a real smile because Ruby’s good people, but she’s also someone new, now.  The grin she offers is wry and cynical and whoever this Ruby is, she doesn’t sharpen her teeth with sex appeal and she doesn’t have sweetness on the tip of her tongue.  But she hands over one of the paper cups with the same steady wrist as always, and looks around the car with the same spark of interest as always.  “There are more subtle ways to declare allegiance, you know.”

Emma blames the fact that her response is flat and barbed entirely on a month of bantering with Regina.  “I didn’t want to risk misinterpretation.”

But Ruby just nods.  This new Ruby, she’s softer, quieter; something about her hums with—contentment isn’t the right word, but—ease, maybe.  Like she belongs in her skin.  “Neither do I,” she says, and gestures with her chin towards the bag.  “Two bearclaws. You’re skin and bones.”

Emma stares at her, and Ruby stares back, and before she can stop it, Emma snorts, and Ruby grins, and they’re okay.  “I need answers, Rubes,” she sighs into the lid of the coffee cup, and Ruby nods, burrows into her peacoat.

“I figured.  B&B?”

The old parlor at the B&B has both the biggest fireplace Emma can remember seeing and overstuffed armchairs next to radiators.  She just wants to be warm again.  Safe again.  “Yeah.  B&B,” she agrees, and puts the car in drive.

* * *

There’s far too much caffeine buzzing in her system and the half bearclaw she’d managed to eat sits heavy in her stomach, takes up too much room.  She should’ve paced herself better on the coffee and nibbled on the bearclaw, but she’s missed _normalcy_ so much that she forgot what two straight days of winterberries and pond water could do to a stomach, has done to her stomach.  She puts a hand to her belly to push against the weight of the pastry and feels the folded notebook pages tucked into the waist of her jeans.

Going to Ruby was the right call.  Too right.  There’s too much history; she’d had to start writing it all down and she can’t be bothered to understand or navigate any of it right now.  It’s too much, too complicated, and she knows when she finally does it, it’s going to end up being too painful.

Part of her also knows that for every story Ruby told, there’s a whole other version in Regina’s head, and she doesn’t want to leave any detail to fester in her mind without rebuttal.  Part of her wants to be good.  Part of her watched her mother nock arrows like Hawkeye on speed and decided that nothing about the truth could ever be simple.

She turns the knob of the front door carefully, smiles just a little when it gives—and then the smile falters, because does she have parents waiting up for her, now, instead of a roommate who just knew to leave the door unlocked?  Is that where this whole clusterfuck leads?

The living space of the loft is empty and dark and she doesn’t take the time to sort out the relief, the quick release of all the tension at her neck.  She just toes off her boots and pads over to the stairs, skips the fourth one automatically and releases the breath she’s been holding when she reaches her bedroom door and sees it wide open.  Inside, Henry’s sprawled diagonally on the bed in a blue thermal with the Superman logo dotted all over it, mouth open and hair mussed to hell.

Emma smiles, and smiles, and smiles, because where would she go now that there’s a Henry?

She takes two steps into the room and then two more, and then she’s next to the bed and next to Henry and she just takes a moment to watch him sleep.  Just a moment, because she’s never had it before.  Just a moment, because when she sits on the bed he opens his eyes. His sleepy little smile is lopsided and squinty and she thinks, _I made you, little man.  How weird is that?_

“Hi,” Henry whispers, and Emma smiles, brushes her fingers through his hair.

“I missed you, kid,” she murmurs, and when he sits up partially and wraps his arms around her, all she can feel is that strange sensation of being lifted out of the mine and back into the sunlight.  Back into sunlight, where he’s safe and she’s safe and he’s loved unconditionally.

Regina is in jail, and Emma knows too much about swords and bodies.

She sighs, lets go of him.  “You know what happened last night?” she asks, and cringes, because where the fuck was she when someone had to explain to her son that his mother was in jail?  But he nods, and squeezes her hand, and looks at her like he always has: like she’ll fix it.

She wants to say so much.  She wants to say so much to him, like _I’m not your mom_ and _if I could’ve I would’ve been everything you could ever want_ and _you need her, please please please understand that you need her_ and _I love you._

She nudges his shoulder and, after he scoots over, curls up next to him on the bed.  “I’m gonna get her back, okay?  I’m gonna get her out of there.”

Henry smiles, tentatively at first, and it’s the same hesitant, careful smile that she’s seen every night for a month.  “Operation Cottonmouth?” he suggests, and it clicks.

“Did David let you watch _Kill Bill_?”

“It was so cool!”

She groans, and puts her arm over her eyes, and listens to her son laugh and laugh and laugh.

* * *

She takes a shower.  Henry’s fallen back asleep and her—Snow and David are still asleep, so she goes into the bathroom and keeps the lights off, strips and soaks and takes a razor to her pits and shampoos again and again until she can’t run her fingers through her hair for the roughness, until more of the month of oil and dirt and dust and sweat (and the blood, the blood, the blood) has been lifted out with the suds.  She stands under the spray until it starts to run lukewarm, and then sits on the floor of the stall with her knees hugged to her chest until the water hits cold and stinging against her chest and she can’t breathe for the lingering steam.

* * *

Leather makes her feel better.  Leather boots that aren’t worn through at the soles, a leather jacket that doesn’t smell like sweat and fear and ogres and zombies—leather that feels like, moves like, smells like leather.  She feels better until she comes through the double doors of the station and sees Doc Grove and Jeremy from the post office standing at attention in front of the middle cell.  Behind them, the cell is shadowed; Regina is curled up in the corner of the cot, shoulders braced by the wall and the bars of the next cell.

Emma takes three deliberate steps into the room, because it’s _hers_.  Doc and Jeremy look at her with surprise and uncertainty, and she smiles at them.  “So.  You’re not really a pediatrician, and you’re not really the postmaster, are you?”

They look at each other, and then Doc shakes his head.  “No, Princess.  I’m Doc.  He’s Dopey.”

She wants to sit down and laugh.  Seven fucking Dwarves _._ She wants to laugh.  “My title is Sheriff, Doc.”

He’s always struck her as a harsh-faced asshole, but suddenly he gives her a smile that makes him look like a grandfather instead of a hard-ass.  “I delivered you, Sheriff.”

 _Oh._   And then: _well, fuck_.  “Nice to meet you,” she says, quietly, softening her glare.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”  She holds up the white paper bag and nods towards the cell.  “I’d like a moment with the Mayor.  And to give her breakfast.”

Jeremy—Dopey—nope, fuck that, she’s never going to call a grown man Dopey—Jeremy clears his throat, shakes his head.  Doc sighs.  “The rules are—“

Emma snorts.  “I wasn’t asking, Doc.”

Doc and Jeremy look between each other, and Jeremy shrugs.  “Ten minutes, Sheriff.  No more.”

When they’ve stepped out into the vestibule, she goes over to the bars, notes the ugly hunk of metal sitting over the standard lock on the cell door, and holds the bag through.  “Egg white and spinach omelette, extra crispy turkey bacon, and your coffee-bonbon thing.  Granny said it’s your usual.”

Regina lifts her head, but in the shadows Emma can only see the tip of her nose, the edge of her jaw.  “You weren’t there.”

She doesn’t like that voice.  She doesn’t like how it has no depth, just hoarse overtones.  “I didn’t sleep.”

Regina sighs, tilts her head back.  “Leave it on the floor.  I’m not hungry right now.”

Emma closes her eyes, sees a spotless kitchen and unlocked doors.  “How long you been living like this, Regina?”

It’s painful, how that slight frown is familiar in two different ways.  “Like what?”

Clearly, Regina has no intention of leaving her corner, so Emma bends, leaves the bag on the floor of the cell and then drags her old deputy chair over next to the bars.  “Leaving shit unlocked.  Nothing left out at home.  Having a spare key taped to the steering column of your damn car.  Like you’re trying to make clean up _easy_.”

It’s too rough, too aggressive, but this is Regina and Regina knows her.  “Since Henry left.”

Thank God Regina knows her, knows that there’s no point in lies anymore.  “You left shit unlocked while you were home, too?  Just letting anyone in?”

“No.”

“So just when you left.  In case you, what, got killed on the way to the grocery store?”

Regina doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, and Emma leans forward, puts her head against the bars.  She wishes Regina would just pick up the damn bag of food.  She wishes she had something more than _I’m here, please believe that_.

“Tell Henry that this isn’t his fault.”

Emma wants to throw up.

“And that I—that I’m proud of him.  For telling the truth and sticking to it, no matter how many people told him he was wrong or—or crazy, or too young to know.”  Regina hesitates, and Emma knows that soft whistle of sucking in air, of forcing a breath past tears.  “He showed conviction, and courage, and I’m proud of him.”

She presses her head against the bars and keeps her eyes closed because she doesn’t want this.

“He has the terrible habit of falling asleep in his clothes, and he’s normally a heavy sleeper, so once he’s out, he’s out.  Don’t let him go to bed without changing into pajamas.  He will always complain of a stomachache on Sunday night; it will be the only night he has trouble falling asleep.  School makes him nervous, it always has, but once he gets through Monday, he’s fine.  I don’t know when… life might resume, here, but for now he spends the mornings at the library with some other children in a reading group.  The sleep medicine—it makes him hypoglycemic in the mornings and dehydrated at night, so make sure he has carbs with dinner and keep water next to his bed and breakfast should be high in protein and simple sugars— _not_ processed food.  He keeps hard candy like Lifesavers or Werther’s with him now, but you should carry them, too, just in case.  Archie’s planning on weaning him off the medicine in two weeks, so you’ll definitely need to have a back-up supply then.  He goes to the stables for at least an hour every day; his riding lessons are Tuesday and Thursday, your father will have to take over—“ 

“ _Stop_.”  She begs and she’s not ashamed, because this is wrong, and cruel, and she’ll beg.

Regina doesn’t seem to care.  She’s sitting straight again, still hugging her jean-clad knees, and there is that stiffness to her neck, that _poise_.  “These are things you need to know, Emma.  These are things you can’t afford to learn six months down—“

“ _You_ are his mother.”

“I am going to be executed.”  She says it so calmly, so quietly.  She says it just like she said _take the shot_ and just that, just that link, just the thought of the blood—Emma’s stomach turns.  She clutches the bars harder.  “You are his mother now.”  And then the smallest smile, a flash of white teeth in the shadow.  “Don’t screw up.”

She can’t help but huff out a laugh.  “You’re not dying.”

“Emma—“

“You’re not, okay?  You’re just… you’re not.  Operation Cottonmouth, so you’re not.  So just shut up and let me do my savior thing and for the love of God, will you eat your damn breakfast?  Because if it gets cold, I’m not going to get you another one.”

That poise collapses; Regina slumps back into her corner.  “Don’t waste your energy.  Prioritize Henry.”

“Don’t waste my time with bullshit.  Saving his mother _is_ prioritizing him.”  She nudges the bag with her boot, glares.  “Come eat.  Ruby won’t be by with lunch until close to two.”

Regina sighs, puts her forehead on her knees.  For a minute, Emma thinks she’s going to have to start up a whole new slew of arguments, but Regina finally unfolds her body and comes over to the bars.  It’s startling, to see her without her makeup and business wear armor, to see her with deeper waves to her hair and hollows under her eyes and nothing beyond exhaustion at the corners of her mouth.  It’s startling and it hurts, because there’s no way that anyone else will look at her long enough to see all of this.

“Thank you for the food, and the _bombón_ ,” Regina says softly, but there’s actual tone to her voice, now.  Like maybe she isn’t quite beaten yet.  “Getting my usual was very considerate.”

Emma tries for a grin, feels it only take on one side of her face.  “Psh.  I ordered you disco fries and a latte.  Granny gave me this crap instead.  Egg whites.  Who does that?”

She knows that mouth, now, and sees how the corners quirk just slightly.  It’s enough.

* * *

It’s almost eight by the time she gets back to the apartment, and her—her family, her family, her family, they’re all gathered around the kitchen counter with different forms of breakfast food.  When they turn to look at her, she wants to back right out of the room because David looks apprehensive and Snow looks _frantic_ and Henry’s just beaming at her and it all says too much.

Emma steps further in, closes the door behind her and shoves her hands in her jeans pockets, ambles forward.  “Morning.  What’s for breakfast?”

David relaxes and Snow frowns and Henry pushes a plate in her direction.  “Bagel.  But I just ate the last of the cream cheese so jelly or butter for you.”

The fact that he is entirely unrepentant about the cream cheese makes something in her unwind.  “Good thing I’m a jelly _and_ butter kinda gal,” she counters, and sits on the stool next to him.

It’s peaceable while she waits for her bagel to toast. David’s narrating the basics of whatever happened in town in the last month and Emma tunes out the words, just listens to the cadence of his voice as he speaks.  His voice rises and falls and feels… soft.  Soft like white wool and purple embroidery.

This is her _dad_.

“Emma?”

She looks up from the butter melting on her bagel and sees all three of them staring at her.  “Sorry—what?”

“We’re expected to be on the council—the council to, um, try the case.  Both of us.  So we’ll be gone… almost all day.  Which isn’t what I wanted for your first day back, but—“

The way Henry’s jaw is locked up tight sends something spiteful and sharp through her lungs.  “You wanna tell me why they chose right then to arrest her?”

Henry looks up from his plate, eyes wide with shock, and Snow and David just look at her with confusion and hurt.  It came out rough and pointed and accusatory and she probably should have thought about it more but—her son’s _mother_.

David, finally, looks away.  “I tried to stall them.  I told them we needed her to get you back, I did what I could, I thought they’d at least wait until—“

“Until what?”

It’s silent and heavy until Snow slowly reaches forward, puts her hand on Emma’s wrist.  “Emma, let’s take this aside, okay?”

She looks at Henry because Snow nods at him, and then she feels like a fucking tool, because even if he’s used to his moms at war, internal family strife isn’t something he’s learned to tune out and walk around.  It isn’t something she wants him to learn.  “Yeah, okay,” she breathes out, and reaches over, ruffles Henry’s hair.  “Gimme a minute, kid.  Slather some jelly on that for me?”

“Sure,” he says, too quietly.

Out in the hall, she avoid eye contact, works the toe of her boot over a knot in the wood floor.  “So, okay, this council thing.  How’s it work?  Do you guys call character witnesses or conduct an investigation or what?”

Her father is Prince Charming and he wears plaid shirts and Tims and likes swords and her mother is Snow White and she prefers cardigans and floral prints and longbows and that may be the sum total of what she knows about either of them.  She certainly doesn’t know whether they’re hesitating out of fear or confusion or grief or respect.  She doesn’t know and she doesn’t know them and they don’t know her and she—she has to stop.  She has to stop.

“I don’t think that’s how it’s going to work, Emma,” David finally says.  “The council… is aware of her crimes.  We all are.”

Oh.  Oh, fucking hell, no.  “But—she’s _different_.”

Snow folds her lips and David’s shoulders sag and she doesn’t know what that _means_.  “I know,” Snow says, “that you’ve come to see eye to eye with her about Henry—“

“Please don’t let them kill her. _”_

Snow looks away entirely.  David clears his throat.  “I… don’t know that we can force an outcome.”

“David—you saw her, right?  You dealt with her.  She’s _different_.  She’s not that—she’s his _mom_.”  And they just keep looking at each other, and at her, and she remembers that look.  That’s the look of _little girl,_ _you won’t understand_ and she hates that look.  “Please.  For Henry.  Please.  Please don’t make him think for a second that he started something that got his mom killed.”

Snow gasps and David physically recoils and she thinks, maybe, that it hit home.  Maybe.  “Oh, gods, Emma—“

“Exactly.  Please.”  Snow reaches for her but she steps back, curls into herself.  “Please.”

* * *

She naps through the morning in fitful spurts.  She can’t differentiate between the front window of the diner and the skylight of Cora’s prison hut and the bright white ceiling of her own bedroom.  She can’t settle, can’t sink into whatever place it was that let her just sit with hot chocolate and—and a friend.  She dreams of dragons and dalmatians and a revolver with no bullets.  She dreams of blood and blood and blood.  She keeps waking to warm, still air and silence.

She gives up at one, throws off the covers, pulls on sweats and stomps down the stairs, hitting the fourth one with a vengeance.  The high-pitched squeal of metal startles Henry, standing at the kitchen counter.  He’s got a slice of bread in one hand and what looks like a mustard-slathered knife in the other.  “Hey, kid,” she mumbles, and grins sheepishly.  “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He smiles back, gestures with the bread hand.  “I made you a sandwich.”

Sure enough, there’s a damn masterpiece of a sandwich on a blue plate, the bread lightly toasted and cut diagonally.  It looks like—like serrano ham, and there’s some type of leafy thing with it, and the good mustard is out on the counter, and a block of mild cheddar, and her stomach simultaneously growls and rolls.  “That’s a hell of a sandwich,” she says, sliding onto the stool, and Henry grins.  “You made that?”

 He’s making another one, too.  “Yup.”

She takes a bite and has to sigh; it’s the right combination of everything she’s missed, and not so heavy that she’ll get sick again, as long as she eats slowly.  Henry watches her face, clearly pleased that she likes it.  “Okay, spill—you go to culinary school while I was gone?” she teases, and Henry half-blushes.  It’s adorable. He’s gotta cut that out before high school or they’ll eat him alive.

“No— _duh_ —that’s how Mom makes ‘em.”

She pauses with the last bite of the half against her lips.  “Your mom does food as pedestrian as sandwiches?”

He wrinkles his nose at _pedestrian_ , but rolls his eyes.  This teenager shit is going to suck when it hits.  “I go to _school_ , Emma.”

“Oh.  Right.”  She finishes the half, hums contentedly.  “Well, you did good, kid.  It’s delicious.  Thanks.”

He beams again and puts the cheese away.  “Welcome.”  They sit next to each other for a little while, munching away, until Henry clears his throat.  “You saw her?”

She nods, avoids eye contact.  “Yeah.  Thought they weren’t gonna let me, but they did.”

“Is she okay?”

 _No_ , she wants to shout, but she shrugs.  “She’s safe,” she tells him.

He chews his lip, looks up at her shyly.  “Can I see her?”

Nothing’s ever prepared her for the combination of hope and hesitation on his face.  What can she possibly say?  “I’ll find out,” she promises.  “But—Henry, I do want you to see her, but you have to understand, seeing someone you love in jail can be… really hard.  You get it?”

He looks down, nods.  “Yeah, I get it.”  And then he stuns her, like he has every day since he found her.  “But sometimes you have to do the hard things to make it easier for someone else.  Right?  That’s how it works.”

He doesn’t name _it_ , but she knows, and he knows.  Someday, he’ll be ready to say it again.  “Yeah, kid.  That’s how it works.”  They eat silently for a little longer, until she looks at the counter and sees all the utensils Henry used on the sandwiches.  “Hold it.  _Which_ knives were you using?”

* * *

She spends a few hours in the afternoon comparing her notes from talking to Ruby with bits of Henry’s book, which mostly just makes her head ache and her heart hurt.  Nothing about the book tells the truth about that world—about how brutal it is, how vicious—and only a quarter of Ruby’s comparatively straightforward facts even begins to sketch out everything the book talks about.  She shouldn’t be surprised, she really shouldn’t, but she keeps hoping for something to be easy.  A few simple answers should have been easy.

Henry apparently has standing appointments with the Tillman kids and then Archie, assures her he doesn’t need company on the walk and that he’ll be back in time to help with dinner.  She notices that he doesn’t lisp quite as much as he used to, and that his jaw seems stronger than before.  He also puts on scuffed up Converse instead of clean white tennis shoes and wears miniature versions of David’s plaid flannel shirts instead of the sweaters and button-fronts Regina always had him in.

It’s been just over a month and she feels like she missed another ten years.

But the kid’s good on his word, back at the apartment by six and craving spaghetti.  He talks, not about Operation Cobra, finally, but about what he’s reading with this library group and how Nick is teaching him to play rugby and he constantly corrects what she does at the stove with “Mom does this” and “I think she adds basil to the water” and “Jar sauce?”  

When Snow and David come in at seven, Henry runs to give them hugs, leaving Emma in the lurch with a colander full of spaghetti.  They both look tired—Snow more than David—but happy to see him.  Of course, the first words out of his mouth are, “So when is Mom coming home?” and they all freeze.

David takes it, puts a hand on Henry’s shoulder and smiles.  “Not yet, Henry, but I’m sure it’ll all work out soon,” he says, and Emma sees the lie of it written all over Snow’s face.

Dinner is tense, in the moments in between Henry’s enthusiastic questions about the other world and Snow’s elaborate answers.  Emma keeps things simple: ogres suck, zombies suck, chimeras suck and are really hard to hunt.  She leaves out the truer pieces about being hungry and thirsty and dirty and frightened and confused.  She leaves out the part about being cold, all the time.  She doesn’t want to think about it anymore.  She’s been all of those things before, she knows how to survive them, but if she hadn’t had the tether of the dreams and the diner and untranslatable sarcasm—she didn’t know how to survive over there.  She’s never not known how to survive.

Snow indulges Henry with recounting fights, and teasing Emma about some of her less than heroic moments.  David looks between all three of them with a smile, but every time he looks at Emma, she feels his smile slip, just a little bit.  She doesn’t do anything but fork up more spaghetti and contribute a repetition of “Ogres suck” because she doesn’t really know how to survive this, either.

When Henry’s fork scrapes his empty plate for the fourth time, Emma stands up, stacks his on top of her own and reaches for the empty serving bowl.  David takes them out of her hands, and Snow takes them from him.  It’s bizarre and sickeningly familial.  “I’ll wash up,” Snow offers, and smiles down at Henry.  “Henry, will you help me?”  So Emma gets to watch her son and her mother clear the table and start washing dishes like this _happens_ and this is _normal_ and it starts itching at her skin.  

There’s suddenly a bottle of Blue Moon being held out to her, and she looks up to see David’s kind, sad smile.  “Drink with your old man?”

The itch explodes on the soles of her feet, but she takes the bottle and presses the top into the center of her palm, twists quickly.  David lifts his eyebrows briefly, but just smiles again, and Emma closes her eyes to take a sip.  “Take this outside?” she suggests, when she realizes he’s still smiling.

He nods, grabs two hoodies off the coat rack and lets her lead the way out of the apartment and back into the alley between the sporting goods store and their building.  She pokes around for a minute, uncovers three plastic crates under a pile of collapsed cardboard boxes and kicks one over to him, pushes the other along for herself.  “So,” she starts, takes a seat and stretches her legs out in front of her.  “Wanna tell me why you lied to my kid?”

David sighs, takes a sip.  “I didn’t—“

“Really?”  

He folds easily, looks down at the asphalt.  She remembers this guy.  This is the bewildered coward with the nice guy smile.  She can’t be bothered with this guy.

“What’s gonna happen to her?”

He won’t meet her eyes.  “I don’t know yet.”

“Who’s making these decisions?  Do they even know her?”

“Do you?”  It’s the first sign of a fight he’s given her and she takes it gratefully, gives him a hard glare.  “Look, I know she’s been good to Henry, but—“

“I don’t think you even understand what that means.”

There’s a flash of frustration on his face and it looks familiar, eerily so.  “So _help_ me understand.  This is hard for me, Emma, and it’s hard for your mother, too.  Sometimes I look at her and yeah, I see Henry’s mom, and then sometimes—most times—I see the woman who—gods, who killed people and destroyed my family and stole my grandson.”

“She did _not_ steal him.”

David grimaces, huffs.  “I tried, Emma, I—I worked so hard to be _kind_ , for Henry’s sake, but sometimes…”

She wants to say so much.  She wants David to understand that Regina’s trying, too.  She needs him to understand that, so she tries.  “When I talked to Ruby, she said—she said Snow tried to kill Regina.  With a poison arrow.  That she’d almost gone to the dark, but that you stepped in front of that arrow and brought her back.  That even with all the pain she’d been through, all the fear, you pulled her back to the light.”  David nods, and Emma thinks of the white light coming through the diner window and how Regina would close her eyes, just to feel it.  “Love brought her back to the light.”

David starts shaking his head.  “Snow _loved_ Regina.  She spent most of her childhood idolizing—“

“That’s the goddamn _point_ , David!”

There are too many words in her mouth, and she breathes into the beer bottle to chase them away.  She doesn’t—she won’t tell what isn’t hers.  She won’t do it, even if it would change everything.  But she has to say something—something to make it all make sense.  “Regina, age eighteen, at most.  Watches her mother—you remember, the woman whose body parts you helped dispose of last night?  Yeah.  Watches her mother kill the love of her life, right in front of her.  Then is forced into a marriage to a fifty year old lech after a ten year old girl picks her out like a doll.”  

David’s face twists.  “Your grandfather was a great man—“

“My _grandfather_ thought a forced marriage to a barely legal _girl_ was fine and dandy, so let’s hold off on the unconditional praise, shall we?” she spits back.  He starts to say something else, but Emma just holds up a hand, shakes her head.  “So you tell me, David, how the hell that girl was supposed to take that kind of _idolatry_ when it turned her life into _that_?”

There’s so much more she wants to say.  Emma wants to scream at David until he _gets it_ , gets what the art of positioning is and how Regina is _always_ ready for a physical attack.  She wants to scream until he thinks about what could _possibly_ happen to a pretty young royal wife on her wedding night.  Until he has all the same ghosts floating around in his head.

She puts down her beer—almost empty, and she’s gonna need a shit ton more alcohol after this—and chews on her lower lip until the right words come.  “You need to understand three things.  The only love that could have ever brought her back?  That’s Henry’s love.  And he _does_ love her, so all of you on the lying and bullshit brigade better cut the crap and accept that.  Two, she is the best damn mother I could’ve ever hoped for Henry to have, and she is trying to be better.  I can’t make you understand where he could have ended up, who he could have ended up as.  But he’s _Henry_ and he’s a fucking miracle, and that’s because of her.  And three…”  The words fade, and all she’s got is that sick, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, like the first time she saw Regina cry.  “You will never be able to understand what taking away hope does to a person, not until it happens to you.  All of you can say it’s about true love and betrayal, but it’s not.  It’s about hope and freedom.  That’s all anything is ever about.”

Emma finally looks at him, and he’s clenching his jaw and clutching his beer too tightly.  She almost smiles, because that’s exactly what she does right before she starts a fight.  “We… we had a lot of hopes for you, Emma,” he finally says.  It takes all the air out of her lungs.  “There were so, so many things I wanted to show you.  So many things I wanted to teach you, and that—I can’t.  I can’t do those things.”  He sighs again, lowers his head.  “You had to teach yourself.”

She closes her eyes and leans back, rests the crown of her head against the brick wall.  She can’t rail against grief like this.  There’s no soothing it; she knows that.  She feels it every time she thinks of Henry’s first steps.

“She took—she took _you_ , Emma.  She took you from us.  She took your life from you—“

“No.”  It comes out hard and sharp like an arrow, like a knife.  “No.  There are… there are a lot of things you can accuse Regina of, but—“ and she shakes her head, releases a breath slowly.  “No.  Nobody took my life from me.  My life made Henry.  And any other way—any other—no.  No one took my life from me.”

David drags his sleeve under his nose and she realizes that he’s crying.  He’s crying, and maybe—maybe, if he’s like her, that means he’s not fighting, anymore.  Maybe.  If he’s like her.

“It doesn’t look good for her.”

She closes her eyes, because of course it doesn’t.  “How do we make it look better?”

Something about his face makes everything feel blurry at the edges.  “She added to the list of charges.  She’s confessed to things… things we didn’t know about.  In that world, and this one.”

That sickness in the pit of her stomach rises.  “She what?”  

“It doesn’t look good for her.  I don’t think—“ and David stops, drains his beer.  It’s a long time before he speaks again. “They’ll bring her over to Town Hall at ten, which means they’ll ready her at nine thirty.  I can set up a distraction at nine forty, which will give you maybe three minutes to get her out the back door of the station.  I’ll have two horses waiting for you.  They’d look for you on foot or in a car.  You take the horses straight to the tree line, then go.”

She doesn’t know what to say besides _Are you fucking insane_.  So she says the next best thing.  “I hate horses.”

“It’s the best way.”

“She can’t just… apparate us somewhere?”

“They’re using special manacles.  Magic dampening.  The effects take a few hours to wear off.”

She shoots back, “Got any racing brooms?” but she’s still sick inside.  She’s still not home, yet.  Still not safe.  “No.  She’s not a fugitive.  If she can’t come straight home to Henry, it’s a no go.”

There’s something dark in David’s eyes; she thinks it looks like regret.  “This might be your only shot.”

She has to laugh at that.  “If the past month has taught me anything, David—I’ve always got another shot.”

* * *

When she finally stumbles up the stairs to bed, she’s more than a little drunk.  She’s more than a little drunk because after David’s idiotic _take the horses to the tree line_ moment, and all the ghosts swirling in her head and how they trace lines in the air that are supposed to be Regina’s shoulders and her spine and those sad, sad eyes, and the way the oldest bricks in the wall of the apartment building are dark and blotchy like clotting blood—after all of that, she’d gone back into the kitchen for her bottle of Jack.

Because which way is up is a question she can’t answer sober, so why not be drunk?  It doesn’t take much—five bitter, burning mouthfuls—and there’s another thing to blame on fucking fairy tales: that world took ten pounds and her tolerance, too.

Fuck fairy tales.  Fuck them _all_ , because they make everyone dumb and naive and so goddamn black-and-white.  Because—because people depend on _happy endings_ when the only thing that ever fucking matters is the goddamn _middle_.  

Because what the fuck is Regina _thinking_ , making it worse?  Who is this dumb, idiotic, sad, sad woman whose contingency plan looks like suicide by proxy?

She fall into bed and stares at Henry’s hair—sticking straight out from his head on top, plastered to his skin on the sides—until it blurs and swims and then fades out into pale, grey, winter morning light and metal-edged formica tables.  Regina’s sitting at their table, expressionless, with her hands in her lap and her eyes fixed out the window.  But she knows Emma’s there, because her shoulders shift like everything just got so much _heavier_ , and she whispers something under her breath.  It sounds like _of course_ , and it sounds like defeat.

Maybe Emma’s not drunk enough, because she snaps.  She yanks two chairs out of her way and plants her boot on the edge of the table and maybe those ten pounds didn’t come off her thighs, maybe she’s still Swan the Bounty Hunter, maybe.  She pushes and extends her leg and the table tips towards the wall and Regina flinches, flinches hard, and Emma _hates_ her.  “The _fuck_ are you thinking?” she shouts, and has to ball her fists up at her sides to keep from shaking Regina.

Or maybe she _should_ shake her, maybe she should punch her in the face, because Regina laughs at her, soft and dry and casual.  “Did you really forget already, Miss Swan?  I’m the Evil Queen.  Evil must be vanquished.”

It’s those fucking eyes, those sad, dark eyes.  Regina can laugh and smile and taunt her way to Hell and back, but those fucking eyes—Emma deflates.  What else can she do? Those dark, dark eyes look at her like—like she _has_ to understand.  They look like they did in those crazy, incomprehensible moments when Regina kept whispering _take the shot_ and Emma couldn’t see anything but all the lights going out.

She sits, drops onto the chair left next to Regina.  “Are you?  Evil?”

It makes Regina stiffen, hold her breath, curl deeper into her thick sweater.  Emma hates it when she does that, hates the idea that she doesn’t want to keep breathing.  “Was my mother?” she finally whispers, and _oh_.

 _Jesus_.

“Regina—fuck—you can’t—“ Emma reaches out, clumsily, puts a whole hand on Regina’s knee, pauses at the feel of well-worn denim.  “You’re not her.  You’re not.”

“But she could have been me.”  And then Regina gives that small, mournful smile, actually looks at her.  “But we’ll never know, will we?  Because I killed her.  And not even for what she’d _done_.  No—I took her life because of what she _could do_.”  That mouth twists, and Regina leans forward just slightly.  “I made you cut her up, Emma.  And not for _revenge_ or _justice_ or anything that could be forgiven.  For _fear_.  I made you cut her up for _fear_.”

Emma tries—she tries so hard—to not close her eyes, to not think of blood and bone and flesh and _squish_ , but she can’t not.  She can’t not.

“So why not the same for me?” Regina whispers, and Emma opens her eyes, pushes all of that flesh and bone out of her mind.  “You still don’t know what I’m capable of.  You shouldn’t ever find out.”

It’s those eyes.  It’s always going to be those eyes.  They’re screaming _help me_ just as loud as they did at the mine, in the fire.  Even if that mouth can’t be honest for a moment, those eyes can’t not.

So she says “Henry” and Regina recoils.  “Henry.  You’re capable of _Henry_.”  

Regina shakes her head, looks away.  “Don’t.”

“Don’t do this.”

And that mouth, that mouth turns up into a smile.  Emma hates that smile.  “This is how it’s supposed to go.  This is how you break a curse.”  Regina lifts her eyes and— _God_ —she is so sad and so open and she’s _beautiful_ and this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.  Regina isn’t supposed to break.  “The witch must die.  And you’ve been so merciful.  So merciful, Emma.  Because now—now it will be quick.  Quick and civilized.  Take my head with the Witch-Killer, burn my body on heartwood.”

“ _No.”_

There are tears in those dark, dark eyes, but that mouth is still smiling.  She doesn’t know how she’s never thought _bravery_ before.  “I won’t suffer this way,” Regina whispers. Then she adds, so softly that Emma can barely hear, “You don’t know how tired I am of suffering.”

* * *

She wakes up with her mind so full of Regina, so overrun with those eyes and the line of her spine and all that darkness, that she has to move.  It doesn’t matter that it’s four in the morning, or that it’s abysmally cold in the bedroom, or that she has nowhere to go but here.  She kicks the covers onto Henry’s side and pulls on her worn-out Saints hoodie and tugs out her ponytail, reties it haphazardly.  It’s drafty in the room; she should dig up some extra blankets for the kid.

Except she needs to get the fuck out of the room.  She can’t look at him and not see Regina.  She can’t sit here and not think bravery and suffering and darkness and idiocy.

Regina is _waiting to die_.  What fucking world did she come back to where _Regina Mills_ would wait to die?  And—God, just how fucked in the head is she, if she can talk about being beheaded and burned like it’s _ordinary_ and not horrific and not—they did that to Cora.  How does she not know?  Doesn’t she know she—doesn’t she know there’s hope?

Emma lifts her head out of her hands and stares at the two swords hanging in their scabbards from hooks on the wall.  She’s got to keep track of the days; they’d agreed that after ten days, Emma would reopen the portal.  Mulan and Aurora had ten days to try this Hail Mary pass for Phillip’s soul.  Ten days—nine, now—and Emma would use fucking _Excalibur_ to bring them through.

And maybe she’d throw Carnwennan back through the portal, right then, because the idea of a witch-killing sword in a world where the only witch is Regina—everything in her body rejects it.  Rejects the sword and the—

Oh, _fuck_.

She’s up and pulling one scabbard over her shoulders and down the stairs in five breaths, and out the door in ten, and then she stands in the street and looks. Nothing looks different and everything looks different.  Stores have been renamed and people moved in to the vacant units across the street and there’s a painter’s set-up around the library and where the _fuck_ is the blue and white lobster shack that marks the turn onto St. George?

Everything’s different and nothing is.  She hates this whole fucking world.

She finally sees it—white and red, now—and starts sprinting, because it’s cold and there’s no fucking time, anyway.  Because a witch-killing sword in a world with magic—what have they _done_?

Gold’s house—too narrow, too pointed, too half-assed Gothic—kind of glistens, which creeps her the hell out.  At four in the morning nothing should glisten, nothing should stand out.  The house does and, if she thinks about it, she does too: sword strapped to her back, hammering on the front door with a heavy fist and kicks interspersed for effect.  “Gold!  Gold, open the damn door!”

It takes him a good seven minutes to reach the door, and as soon as she hears the lock turn she gives an extra kick.  He doesn’t take kindly to it.  “Sheriff.  It’s four thirty.  What—“

Fuck the talk.  Emma steps through the doorway, jabs a finger at his shoulder.  “What bullshit set-up job are you trying to pull?”

When she gets in normal people’s faces, they tend to look directly into her eye, or look down to avoid eye contact.  No one’s ever looked just left of her head.  “Kindly step back, Sheriff,” Gold hisses, but his eyes are still just to the left—

The sword.  The bright white hilt of the sword.  She gives him a shove and reaches back for the sword, unsheathes it with one smooth motion that feels too natural, too smooth.  “You told her about this thing.  You told her about it and now she’s _different_.”

Gold steps back, retreats three paces, but his eyes stay locked on the hilt.  “Well, well.  That’s certainly not Excalibur.”

Something about his tone—something about the way he’s balanced—Emma freezes.  “You didn’t know about this one.”

He finally meets her gaze, but only to scoff.  “If you’re asking if Carnwennan is familiar to me—“

“You didn’t _tell her_ to get this one.”

His displeasure at being interrupted shows in the way his mouth twists.  “No, Sheriff, I did not.”

It’s got to be a lie.  He’s—he’s got to be running a con.  “You told her how to get—“

“Excalibur and only Excalibur.  It is not my fault if Regina has a habit of overreaching in her own scheming.”  Overreaching—this rat bastard.  He takes a half step forward, pauses when she resettles her grip on the hilt.  “Now, if I recall, I told her that I had no interest in her fight.  That also holds true for its consequences.”

The hint of glee when he says _consequences_ , the way he tilts his head—it’s a con.  It’s got to be a con. But what’s the game?  “What consequences?” she hisses, and settles the sword against her shoulder, choked up like she’s ready for a curveball.

Gold shrugs at her, crosses his arms above the belt of his dressing gown.  “Who knows what the future holds?”

Fucking bullshit _games_.  She folds her lips, resettles her grip on the hilt of the sword and sets her eye on the side table in the entranceway, places the instep of her chucks just beneath the cross-brace of the legs.  “Immediate future?  I’d put money on property damage.”  Two feints, the table end rising just slightly on each, and then a full lift and push and it tips, crashes onto its side and takes two vases out with it.   “Huh.  Look at that.  I’m a regular clairvoyant.”

Gold clenches his jaw, his fists, glares at her.  “That was unwise.”

“So is toying with me.  Let’s try this again.  _What consequences._ ”

“You’re asking me to tell you the future, Sheriff, and that’s a large and varied place.”

 _Jesus_.  If this was the bullshit they’d all put up with back in that hellhole of a forest, she more than understands homicidal urges.  “Tell me what the consequences of her using this sword are.”

And there, the slightest smile, a shift in his shoulders like _triumph_.  “What happens when a witch wields the Witch-Killer?  Why, I can’t _begin_ to imagine.”

She closes her eyes, feels the sentence roll around in her brain.  What happens when a witch wields the Witch-Killer.  She’s been dumb.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.  Stupid Swan—she never should’ve—

 _Focus_.  No time for hindsight.  “How do I fix it?” she growls, and Gold just grins at her, sharp and smug.

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again,” he sing-songs, and she half-lunges at him, holds herself back just in time.  “I’ve always been partial to nursery rhymes,” Gold continues.  “They do such a thorough job of teaching our children the hardest of life lessons.”

It’s all games and feints and shadows and Emma hates him anyway, because she _gets_ it.  Doesn’t mean she has to take it lying down, though, so she lets her face do what it wants and morph into a snarl, lets her feet carry her the six paces into the living room, lets her hand twirl Carnwennan with a flourish.  And with Gold watching and seething, she slides the blade across the back cushions of his sofa, then the easy chair.  The leather splits—like butter, like warm butter—and Emma smiles.  “I hate nursery rhymes.  They just bring out the worst in me,” she damn near chirps, and brushes past him to the door.

His voice, sibilant and saccharine, makes her pause.  “I could look into it, of course.  Your… quandary.”

Emma hesitates.  She thinks of little baby Alexandra and how, just before the curse broke, she’d started greeting Emma with raised arms and smiles.  “For a price, right?”

Gold makes a small, noncommittal sound.  “Perhaps another favor.  Perhaps something… else.”

“Go to hell,” she hisses, and slams the door.


	2. Melinoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks always to Kate for the hand-holding and reassurances in addition to thoughtful and nuanced feedback. Also, for agreeing that Coca Cola is an inalienable right.  
> Special thanks to fortunas-wheel for legal consulting and undertheteacup for ethics counseling.
> 
> Guest-starring Hector Elizondo as Marcel/Mark Purbeck, because everything should have Hector Elizondo.
> 
> Things I have done for this chapter: made shit up about adoption agencies; sacrificed five months of my life.
> 
> Contains discussion of rape, allusions to dismemberment.

 

> I want it
> 
> to be my fault
> 
> she said
> 
> so I can fix it—
> 
>  
> 
> *
> 
>  
> 
> _Blue sky, blue ice,_
> 
> _street like a frozen river_
> 
>  
> 
> you’re talking 
> 
> about my life
> 
> she said
> 
>  
> 
> _Blue Rotunda_ , Louise Gluck

* * *

It’s barely six when she gets to the station, but there are guards on duty anyway—this time without pins.  “Morning,” she says to both men, and then stops, because she’s looking at the Purbeck brothers, and that throws her.  Andre—Andre’s the superintendent, and Julian’s Comptroller, and anybody that close to the Mayor, anybody who Regina would have trusted to work with for nearly thirty years—how?

The brothers—both tall, dark, barrel-bodied—look at each other, then back at her, and Andre speaks first.  “Morning, Sheriff.  We weren’t aware that you’d be in this early.”

Julian doesn’t take his eyes off of her, moves forward slightly to position himself between her and the cell door.  She tries for a smile, but the back of her skull is prickling because Julian’s also blocked Regina from her view.  “Came to see the Mayor,” she says, gestures down at her clothes.  “Promise, I’d never show up for work in sweats.”

“Liar.”  That dry drawl, pitched low and scratchy; Emma can’t help but grin.  “It’s all right, gentlemen.”

Neither of the brothers move.  “She’s armed,” Julian says softly.

“Seriously?” Emma says, because none of this makes sense.  “You’re the ones keeping her in a cell but _I’m_ the threat?”

“Boys,” Regina says, and Emma wishes she could see her, see how she looks when she sounds so gentle.  “It’s all right.”

They both glare at Emma as they move from in front of the cell over to the bench by the double doors.  Andre picks up yesterday’s paper, but Julian sits with his arms crossed and blatantly stares.

Emma sighs, turns back to Regina and frowns, because there are two more blankets in the cell than there were yesterday, and what looks like an actual pillow and not a triple-folded sheet in a sack.  “Made some upgrades?” she asks.

Regina, sitting up and wrapped in one of the new blankets—microplush? Jesus, this woman—glances at the pillow, then over at the brothers.  “They were brought,” is all she says, and her mouth sets in that way that says _no questions._

Which of course means Emma has to ask.  “By them?  The hell—what’s the deal?”

Regina doesn’t answer.  “It’s early, Sheriff.  Why are you here?”

The formality doesn’t hide the fatigue in her voice.  Seeing her like this—burrowing into a blanket, still in Emma’s clothes, still in jail—seeing her like this and thinking of her like she was in the diner, like she was in the B&B, it’s all a mindfuck, and Emma feels it wrapping around her brainstem and squeezing.  She lets her body sag against the bars, tries to see the Regina she knows, the one full of fire and light.  “What happens when a witch wields the Witch-Killer?” she asks softly.

Regina’s shoulders drop.  “Emma.”  Like she wants her to stop before she even gets started.  Like she wants Emma to give up, too.

“I think it does its job any way it can,” Emma continues.

Regina just sighs, leans back against the bars of the next cell.  “It didn’t curse me, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

She ignores her.  “I think it convinces the witch to die any way she can.”

“I know what its influence feels like.  It didn’t curse me.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Emma snaps, “because all I remember is you asking me to _shoot you_ , and now you’re sitting here waiting to be _executed_.”  She watches that strong jaw tense up, like Regina’s holding words in, and those dark, dark eyes look away.  “And you know what?  I asked Gold what this damn sword could do to you, and he quoted Humpty Dumpty at me.  _Humpty fucking Dumpty_ , Regina.”

That does something, sets Regina off somehow.  Her spine stiffens, and she slowly uncurls her body, stands up and steps towards the bars slowly.  “You went to Rumplestiltskin about Carnwennan?” she says, but it sounds like a hiss.

Like she has the _right_.  “Yeah, I did,” and damn it, everything comes out as a snarl, “because your fatalism isn’t doing _shit_ for me right now, and it’s not doing shit for _our kid_ , either.”

Regina closes her eyes for a moment, blinks rapidly and then looks up at Emma.  The mask is familiar but just slightly off.  Just slightly less vicious than it should be.  “Well, congratulations, Sheriff Swan.  You’ve actually defied my expectations of just how idiotic you can be.”

Emma bites her tongue, digs her nails into her palms.  “Well, gee, if you’d told me that Gold didn’t even _know_ you were having me retrieve the damn thing, I would’ve maybe had second thoughts about asking him.”

“Did he touch the sword?”

It’s her all-business voice, and Emma hates that she feels compelled to go with it.  “No.  Didn’t take his eyes off it, but he didn’t touch it.”

That mouth shifts, lower lip pouting out slightly as Regina bites the inside.  “It’s only ever been used on human magic users.  I don’t think it would work on non-humans, but…”  She crosses her arms and those dark, dark eyes follow the cross-strap of the scabbard across Emma’s torso.  “Did he touch _you_?”

Emma can’t help her grimace.  “Ew.  Gross.  No.”

“Not even glancing contact?  How close did he get?”

Something about how Regina’s weight is on her toes, like this question _matters_ , makes Emma close her eyes, try to remember.  “I pushed him.  Twice.  No, three times.  Twice with my hand, once with my shoulder.”

Regina sighs, loudly, and one of the brothers clears his throat just as loudly.  “You can’t keep anything simple, can you?”

“You can’t ever _share relevant information_ , can you?” she spits back.  “What the hell is this about, Regina?”

“I _told you_.”  There’s anger in those dark, dark eyes, and Emma feels a stab of something like relief right through her sternum.  “I _specifically said_ that I did not want Rumple to know about any inherent magic you might have.”

“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that meant ‘keep a fifty-yard radius’?”

“ _Thinking_ was a possibility.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

 _There_.  There, just a flash, just a hint of real fight.  But as quickly as it flashes in, it’s gone.  “If you are trying to reassure me that Henry will remain as well-mannered as he is now after ten years with _you_ , you’re doing a marvelous job.”

It hits like a sucker punch to the gut, and she hates Regina all over again.  “You’re not dying,” she repeats.  “I’m not letting you die.”  Regina doesn’t look away from her eyes, but there’s nothing in her gaze that says _belief_ or even _hope_.  “This—this _thing_ did something to you, and I’m gonna figure it out, and this—this thing you’re doing, it’s gonna stop, and we’re gonna get you out of here.  Okay?”

“The sword didn’t do anything.”

Emma shakes her head, pushes away from the bars.  “Look, I’m gonna go talk to the fair—“

“No!”  Regina moves fast, faster than Emma can believe, reaches through the bars and grabs a fistful of hoodie, tugs.  The sound of a ripping seam makes Emma look down; Regina’s half-torn the right pocket, is still clutching the fabric in her hand.  “No,” she repeats in a whisper, and Emma looks up at her slowly, silently.

She doesn’t say or do anything, just watches Regina’s face.  It’s the same look that went with _You’re Henry’s birth mother?_ and God, it hurts all through her lungs, especially because—

Because, looking at Regina, it isn’t hard to remember what Cora’s face looked like, the way something started to _glow_ about her when Emma said “I kind of share him with Regina.”  Because they killed Cora and Emma can’t forget how it felt to take a sword to a still body and she doesn’t ever want to remember it again.

One of the brother’s cell phones chirps, loudly, and she tenses, finally unfreezes, steps towards the bars again.  Regina doesn’t move back, doesn’t look away.  “The hell, Regina?” she breathes, because the fear all over that face starts to settle into her own body and she doesn’t have the wherewithal to resist.

Regina’s throat moves; she opens her mouth to speak but closes it again, lets her forehead drop against the bars.  “Not here.”

Emma barely makes the words out.  “Talk to me.  Please,” she adds, hates that her voice goes high and wispy when she begs softly.

Regina shakes her head.  “It’s not safe.”

She still hasn’t let go of the hoodie pocket, so Emma slowly lifts her hands, wraps them around Regina’s fingers.  And if she weren’t looking straight into Regina’s eyes, she’d think she’s lost it, because as soon as they are actually touching—she thought it was adrenaline, last night.  This burst of… of bright and acidic energy, citrus on her tongue and in her veins, pushing up from inside her skin—she’d thought it was adrenaline.  A part of her wants to pull away but more of her is screaming to hold on even if it kills her, because Regina looks like herself again.  Looks alive again.  So Emma plays it cool.  “To talk?  I won’t tell anyone, you know that.”

“Dreams are safer,” Regina explains, and that’s good, that means at least one more day, that means rational thought, so Emma relaxes a little, but keeps holding on.

“Okay.  Okay.  When?”

“Tonight.  Don’t go near them, any of them.”

“Okay.  I won’t.”

Regina studies her face, and Emma knows that particular search, what Regina looks like when she looks for lies.  It takes a whole minute, but she’s finally satisfied—which translates into motion, pulling her hand away and stepping back from the bars.  Wrapping herself up in her own body again.  “I need you to—I need you to ask Kathryn to come see me.”

Emma’s jaw tightens up, and she has so many responses and they all start with _Why_ and _the fuck_.  But those won’t get her anywhere, not with Regina right on the bridge between fear and despair.  “Fine.  Stop trying to die.”

She expects any response but the soft, defeated, “I’m tired.”  Anything but that.

So she pokes, again.  “Sucks for you.”

That gets more of a response; those dark, dark eyes flash with irritation.  Emma can barely hold back the grin, because if she can get irritation, she can get anger, and if she can get anger she can get _fight_.  “Emma—“ Regina starts, but Emma just shakes her head.

“ _Our son_ needs you.  Don’t you _dare_ be this selfish.  Not now.”  There, again, something stronger and fiercer than the resignation that makes her sick to her stomach.  It’s something.  It means she’s _trying_.  “You chose him. You chose him for life.  You don’t get to walk out on him now.  You don’t get to change your mind now, just because I’m here.”

A throat clearing behind them makes Emma roll her eyes, turn around with a sarcastic, “Can I help you?” which dies when she sees Mark Purbeck standing next to his sons.  “Mr. Purbeck?”

Mark looks at her, at the sword on her back, then looks at Regina.  “My lady?” he asks, and, yep, that pretty much kills the last of Emma’s rational thought.

“The _fuck_ is going on?” she demands, mostly of Regina.

Regina just sighs, comes over to the bars again.  “Marcel, would you explain to Sheriff Swan why you and your sons are here?  Perhaps while you escort her out?”

The fact that she’s giving instructions from a jail cell and all of them know they’ll do what she says—Emma just kind of quits.  “Who said I’m leaving?” she demands, and plants her feet.

Regina gestures to the clock.  “Henry’s sleep medicine keeps him on a strict schedule.  You have fifteen minutes to get home before he gets up.”

She quits resisting then, too.  “You’ll bring her breakfast?” she asks the brothers, and Julian nods, even if he’s still glowering back at her.  She turns back to Regina, steps in close again.  “I know you’re in there—the real you,” she whispers.  “Keep trying.  Please.  Keep trying, because you raised a beautiful little boy and you can’t let me screw him up, okay?  You just can’t.”

But it’s like talking to a ghost; Regina gives her a hollow smile and those eyes are glassy and cold and for just a second, just a breath, Emma feels like giving up, too.

Purbeck murmurs, “Sheriff,” and just like that, she wants a fight again.  But she quietly follows him out—doesn’t look back at Regina, doesn’t look back at the brothers—into the vestibule and crosses her arms, taps her toe on the tile impatiently.  Purbeck chuckles, hooks his thumbs in the pockets of his slacks.  “Where would you like me to start?”

“How about _the beginning_ and go straight through to _right fucking now_?”

She probably shouldn’t curse, because Purbeck’s sixty if he’s a day, but he smiles at her—kindly, like a grandfather, like Doc.  “Here, I own a shoe store.  Back there, I was the royal cobbler in the White kingdom for almost twenty years.”

He still hasn’t gotten to the relevant part yet.  “What, so, you made all of her ridiculous shoes so—Mr. P, I don’t _get it_.”

“I had a third son.”

She closes her eyes, because— _please_ , please, let Regina not have killed him.

“All three of my boys were drafted into the Royal Guard.  Normally they leave the youngest son, at least, but—the Queen had just died, and things were… overlooked.”  He sighs, twists his wedding ring around with his thumb.  “When Lady Regina came to court, Julian was assigned to her detail.  Two months later, Andre and Claude were transferred to her guard, too.”

She wants to sit down, because she thinks she understands what he’s saying but the tightness at the back of her skull just makes it so hard to trust anything.  “I don’t understand,” she whispers, and Mark—Marcel—Purbeck—just smiles at her.

“She took them out of active duty.  She kept them safe, with her.  With each other.”

And Emma’s brain says _because brothers would fight harder_ but her gut says _that fucking sap_.  “So—so you’re saying—she was—what, good?”

Purbeck shakes his head.  “In the beginning.  Then she was hard.  Unassailable.  But a good queen, an effective queen.  The kingdom was prosperous, safe, and she took care of her own.  When Claude died—there wasn’t a body, but she made sure he had a good funeral.  She made sure.”

She has so many questions, so many questions, but only one of them matters.  “So why—why are you serving as her jailers?  Why are you with them?”

He smiles, kind and gentle, like a father.  “If you had to choose, would you want us or them?”

And then Emma has to sit, has to, because every damn day, someone here teaches her something new about loyalty.

* * *

After breakfast and a shower cut short by the water heater giving up again, she walks Henry to the library, has to smile when he darts over to Nick’s side with barely a goodbye.  Normalcy matters, she guesses, and this is at least a little bit like school, where it’s completely uncool to walk up with a mom in tow.  Any mom.  Would Regina have known that?  Would she have known to just let him walk away, that it wasn’t personal?

 _Was_ it personal?

Emma finds Kathryn—Abigail—Kathryn sitting on the bench in front of the post office, pretty as ever, if infinitely sadder.  Emma offers a weak smile, asks, “Mind if I join you?”

Kathryn smiles back, as if it’s completely normal for Emma to carry two swords on her back in Maine.  “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Emma,” she says, and it’s polite and gentle and ladylike.  Kathryn used to be more natural, easy-going.

Emma tries for a real smile, feels how it pulls at her cheeks and makes them hurt.  “Eh, probably didn’t miss me all that much.  David filled in as Sheriff, Leroy ate all the donuts, bet you barely noticed I was gone.”

Kathryn smiles, inclines her head just slightly.  “Self-deprecating humor.  I suppose you do take after your father the most.”

This woman has been _married_ to her father.  Or a version of her father.  Or— _God,_ what kind of mindfuck is that?  What did Regina _do_ to everyone here?

“Don’t.”  Kathryn’s voice is soft.  “It will be hard enough as it is.  Don’t add to it until you have to.”

“How do you—she said that you visited her.  Once.”  Kathryn nods, and Emma takes a deep breath.  “How?  After—you know that she was responsible.”

Another slow nod, and Emma waits.  “I don’t understand her,” Kathryn says, softly.  “I had to see who she is.  Who could _do_ that to someone, just for revenge against someone else.”  She laughs, under her breath.  “But if you think about it—it’s so small on the list of everything she’s done, isn’t it?  Almost negligible.”

There’s something so tattered to her voice, so sad.  Emma doesn’t know what to do with it, what to say to try and fix it.  “You can’t compare pain,” she tries, and Kathryn smiles.

“Can’t you, though?  Isn’t that the point of all of this?”  She lifts her coffee cup to her lips, and Emma sees the tan line where a wedding ring used to be.

 _Fuck_.

“She—she’s asked to see you,” she says, and watches as all the muscles in Kathryn’s face tighten.  “You don’t have to—“

“Fred mentioned wanting to sign on as a volunteer deputy,” Kathryn interrupts, and Emma blinks, thrown.

 _Fred_.  Frederick.  Henry’s book—Kathryn loved Frederick.  “Oh.  Okay.  Um—he should just, uh, stop by the station.  We’ll talk availability, work something out.”  Kathryn nods, and Emma takes a leap.  “So you and Fred—you’re… okay?”

Those bright blue eyes are hard and cold for a moment.  “He had a steady girlfriend and I was married,” Kathryn says, and her voice is edgy, sharp.  “Married to _David_.  And if Fred ever had an insecurity—David’s it.”

Emma sighs, inhales deeply and lets it out slowly.  “You were engaged to him, there, right?”

Kathryn nods, eyes slowly unfocusing.  “Yes.  Briefly.  I lost Fred to the Golden Touch and David…”  And then she smiles, sardonically, and looks up.  “I was there when they met, your parents.  Most people don’t know that.  I wasn’t _there_ , there, but I was with him the minute before he met her and the minute after.  He was just like me, before.  Resigned, pensive, irritable.  Neither of us had any fight in us.  And then when he came back… it was like seeing someone come back to life.  And I’ve seen that actually happen, so understand what I’m saying here.”

She’s so tired of hearing all about True Love.  “I don’t—what _are_ you saying?”

For a moment, those clear blue eyes soften, darken, and Emma can almost believe that Kathryn isn’t shredded inside.  “Your father came to be my dearest friend, my truest friend. That’s why—the best lies always use the truth.  And I did love David, deeply—just not as a husband.  Not that I knew that, here.  Fred knew how special David was to me.  He also knew that I’d given up on him.  That if David hadn’t gone running after your mother, I would have left Fred behind and married David.  So this world—this world where there’s a marriage license between David and Kathryn Nolan and a house in both their names and years of fake memories and fights and _dreams_ …”

She wants to cover her ears and run, but Kathryn puts a hand on her arm as if to hold her in place.  “David saved Fred’s life.  He rescued him.  And Fred, back there—he was a knight, he held himself to that standard.  But he doesn’t have to, here.  And no matter that David reversed the Golden Touch, no matter that he broke off our engagement, freed me to be with Fred without backlash—“

“He hates him,” Emma breathes.

Kathryn nods, eyes bright but dry.  “And he doesn’t want to.  Hate doesn’t come naturally to him.  He hates David, and he hates that he hates him.  But he thinks of the wedding rings we used to have, and of those months where David Nolan was having an affair here and everyone knew it—“ she stops talking, takes another sip of coffee.  “He wants to volunteer as a deputy because he’s a knight and he wants to help people.  But he doesn’t want to because he can’t stand to look at David.”

Emma twists her hands together, is afraid to look up.  She wants to cover her ears and run.

“You want me to talk to her.”  It’s not even a question, and Emma starts to stutter out a response, but Kathryn just shakes her head.  “Everyone knows where you stand.  You drove around in her car for two days.  You’ve been bringing her food.”

“ _I_ don’t know where I stand,” Emma hisses, tries to swallow the knot of anger in her throat.  “But Henry loves her, and she loves him, and I’m damn well gonna honor that by treating her like a human being.”

“And her car?”

“Couldn’t find my keys.”

Kathryn lets the obvious follow-up slide.  “If you want me to talk to her, promise me that Fred will never share a shift with David.”

Just like that, whatever indignation she feels about being _judged_ evaporates.  “I can promise you that whether you talk to her or not,” she sighs.

Kathryn tears up, then.  Emma knows it’s got nothing to do with her promise.  “I went to see who she is and all I saw was exhaustion,” she whispers.  “I don’t know how to hate exhaustion.”

She lets Kathryn leave first.  She doesn’t feel strong enough to stand, yet.

* * *

Henry’s waiting outside the library when she strolls up, talking earnestly with a short, cute brunette with low-lights Emma would kill for.  “Hey, kid,” she says, and smiles, because his grin makes all the noise in her head shut up.

“Hey, Emma!”  He slides an arm around her waist when she drops a hand on his shoulder, and nods at the other woman.  “Belle, this is my birth mom, Emma.  Emma, this is Belle.”

“For real?” she blurts out, and Belle looks between them with her smile fading just a bit.  “I mean—hi.  Nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too.  Henry’s spoken of you quite a bit.”

The accent throws her, but it’s not like she knows shit about the geography in fucking Fairy Tale Land.  “That can’t be good,” she quips automatically—and it comes out as flat as she _didn’t_ mean it to—and gently flicks Henry’s ear.  “Spreading lies?”

He sticks his tongue out at her, screws his eyes shut for emphasis.  Belle laughs, and Emma hugs the kid closer for a second.  “We’re gonna get lunch at the diner—you wanna come with?” Henry offers, and Belle’s smile shifts just a little bit, closer to genuine happiness.  It’s unusual enough for Emma to feel like she’s missing something, because Granny’s is great and all, but not that great.  Although, compared to overcooked chimera and a handful of bitter leaves that Mulan swore up and down were genuinely edible, Granny’s is champagne and caviar.

Emma starts to clue in when Ruby’s smile triples and she blows off a coffee refill to come straight to their booth and merely confirm regular orders—grilled cheese and two cheeseburgers, two milkshakes and an iced tea.  She clues in when Ruby hands off that coffee refill to Ashley—no, Ella, Ella Ella Ella—and goes on break right after she brings their three orders out.  That new softness, that new calm to Ruby’s whole presence, it kind of expands into a haze that sweeps them all up, gets thicker with every fry Ruby steals from Belle’s plate.

And Belle seems sweet, and genuine, and gentle, and Emma prays in that not-praying way she has that Belle is sweet in the right way, in that intentional way.  Because this—this is what she wants happy endings to look like.  Not the brash and repetitive declarations, the large cliches, but _this_.  Softness.  Quiet touches and shy looks and dumb giggling over dropped ketchup.

When Belle slips out of the booth to go “meet a friend,” though, Emma sees exactly how Ruby’s haze dissolves—how all that sharpness comes back to her jaw and into her bright white smile—and when she sees Belle smile at Gold through the window, she feels everything for Ruby, all the way down her spine.

Henry heads for the bathroom and Granny’s got one eye on Ruby and the other on the clock, so Emma takes her chance.  “You left some things out, the other night.”  Ruby’s gaze stays steady, waiting, so Emma just shrugs, pushes her plate to the middle of the table.  “Have some fries.  You’re skin and bones.”

Ruby smiles, warm and hazy, and takes four.

* * *

Emma doesn’t immediately put two and two together when she sees David walk into the diner, because Henry’s planning out what he wants to bring his mom for dinner and asking if Regina prefers plain caesar or chicken caesar as if Emma has any clue.  He looks up to flag Ruby down and sees David, brightens up instantly.  “Hey, Gramps!”

David gives them both that same, faltering smile from the night before as he slides into the booth next to Henry.  “Hey, champ.  You two ate?”

Henry nods, and Emma cocks her head.  “Didn’t expect to see you until later,” she says pointedly. 

David presses his lips together.  It somehow makes him look older, highlights the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.  “Same.  But—we needed to stop for the day.”

That can’t be good, but Henry doesn’t pick up on that part, just the fact that the council’s called it a day.  “Mom’s out?” he asks, and the hope in his voice sours the coffee in Emma’s mouth.

“They’re bringing her back to the station in a little while.”  It’s so hard to read his face, to figure out what exactly went wrong, if Regina’s in danger or—or anything.  “Hey, Henry, what do you say you and I go make up yesterday’s lesson, so when you visit her later you can tell her what you went over?”

His transparency makes her stomach twist, and Henry catches on, narrows his eyes.  “I want to see her now.”

When David looks to her for help, she just shrugs.  “Any reason he can’t?”

David sighs heavily.  “It was—it was a draining morning.  She looked dead on her feet by the end of it.  Honestly, I’d be surprised if she didn’t go right to sleep.”

Henry watches her face, and Emma studies David in turn, willing him to just give her a sign.  After a moment, she gives in.  “Go with David, Henry.  I’ll go check on her, make sure she’s okay.  Deal?”

His look of frustration—slight side-eye, tight lips, barely flared nostrils—is patented Regina.  “Fine.  But if something’s wrong—“

“You’re my first call.  I know.”  And she smiles at him, at how he’s trying so damn hard.  “Go on.  Before it gets too late to be out there.”

David stands to let Henry out of the booth, gives Emma a look over the kid’s head.  This look, she can read clear as day: _it’s bad, it’s fucked_.  She manages to keep a smile on when Henry hugs her goodbye, and then shoots the rest of her coffee before heading up to the counter to pay.  

Granny gives her a curt nod, hands over another white paper bag.  “Lunch,” she explains, “turkey club and a bottle of water.  There’s a piece of tart in there, too, but if _you_ eat it, you pay for it.”

Jesus.  Emma never even picked up on the fact that Granny wasn’t charging for Regina’s food.  “I mean, as long as it isn’t apple tart, it’s fair game.”  She tries a grin with it, feels it take with just enough authenticity to make her feel normal for a second.

Granny snorts, shakes her head and takes the twenty Emma’s holding out, makes change quickly.  “How is she?” she asks, voice lower than before.

How, exactly, can she explain how Regina is?  All she can do is shake her head, slightly, and stuff the dollar bills into her front pocket.  “I don’t know how to fix it,” is what comes out of her mouth.

Granny looks at her sharply, then scans the rest of the diner before leaning slightly closer.  “Ruby was planning on visiting again, today.  Archie said he would try to stop by, too.”  There’s a flash of dark and saran wrap; three double chocolate cookies go into the white bag.  “It’s not just on you.  So buck up.  You look like death.”

It gets a real smile from her, a real feeling of relief, even if she wants to ask _why do you even care_ , _what makes you different_?  She’s not stupid, though; she learned a long time ago to treat small mercies the same as everything else.

* * *

Some dude with wild gray curls and heavy jowls is locking up the cell when Emma walks in.  He looks familiar—the locksmith.  The locksmith working out of Tillman’s shop.  She can’t remember his name, but context will do.  Two new guards—pins included—are set up on folding chairs in front of the cell.  Regina’s sitting on the cot, still and slightly curled in on herself.  The closer Emma gets, the clearer the dark circles under her eyes become, the easier it is to see the tension at the corners of her jaw.  That dark hair is curlier than yesterday, shiny at the roots.

“Who do I talk to about getting her released on bail?” Emma asks, and the locksmith guy drops his keys with a start.  The two guards glance at each other, then shrug at her.

Locksmith scowls.  “Sheriff.  There will be no bail.”

“What?  That’s crap, she’s hardly a flight risk when _no one can leave town_ —“

“She’s pled guilty,” Locksmith snaps.  “She is not to be released for any reason.”

This stupid fucking _idiot_.  Of course Regina would go all out on self-destruction, too.  “Pled guilty to _what_?” she demands, and looks to Regina for answers.  “What charges were even _filed_?”

Regina keeps to where she is, eyes down.  Locksmith huffs, points to a few typewritten pages on her old deputy desk.  “Catch up on your current events on your own time.  Joshua, Bill, you’re on duty until relief at eight.”

Emma watches him leave, looks back to the two guards, then at Regina, who has at least raised her eyes to knee level.  “He always so cuddly?”

Those dark, dark eyes snap to hers, and she can’t help but smirk.  “Do you know the story of Daedalus, Sheriff?” Regina asks quietly.

Emma’s smirk fades.  “As in Daedalus and Ic—”

Regina holds up a hand.  “You’d do well not to say the name,” she warns.

Emma shuts her mouth, looks between Joshua and Bill—not that she knows either of them.  “Can you give us a minute?” she asks them, and moves to put the paper bag into the cell.

The one on the right swoops down and snatches it while the one on the left steps in as if to intimidate her into stepping back.  “No one is to be left alone with the prisoner,” Left Guard growls.

Emma hears the bag crinkling and clenches her jaw and both fists, lowers her chin just slightly but glares up at Left Guard.  He’s got a good seven inches on her, easily a whole hundred pounds; Right Guard is closer to her specs but has shoulders like a bull.  “Give her the goddamn food,” she hisses, “and get out of my face.”

“Emma, don’t—“

She holds up a hand without taking her eyes off of Left Guard, and Regina falls silent.  “Step back,” she orders again, “and give her the food.”

Having her arm up just gets her closer to the hilt of the sword on her back, and Left Guard finally seems to process that.  He looks between her eyes and the white hilt repeatedly, then looks over to Right Guard and nods once.  Left steps back and Right throws the bag into the cell haphazardly.  

The squeak and snap of styrofoam hitting the cot makes Emma twitch.  She can’t help the slight growl that rises in her throat, but manages to keep it mostly inaudible.  “Now go wait on the other side of those doors,” and she points across her body towards the vestibule doors.

Left Guard crosses his arms over his chest; Right copies.  “No one is to be left alone with the prisoner,” Left repeats.

Emma almost laughs.  “Look, Tweedledum, apparently you missed the memo.  I’m the _Sheriff_.  Rules about prisoners come from _me_.”  He doesn’t budge.  Right looks a little shifty, though, so she pushes again.  “I’m also Snow White’s daughter, which makes me a princess,” and she tries her best not to spit the word, “which means I’m not only giving you a martial order, I’m giving you a royal damn decree.”  

Right’s feet shift slightly, and Emma smiles.  “Also, I’m the freaking Savior.  So whichever way you slice it, I outrank you.  Now _get out_.”

Right takes a whole step and Left realizes he’s lost, scowls.  “Maurice will hear about this,” he snarls.

She’s ninety percent sure that Maurice is the florist, which pretty much makes the entire threat hilarious.  “Tell him I’m a lilies girl,” she retorts, and watches them head out through the doors.

Crinkling paper makes her turn back to Regina, who’s slowly unpacking the bag.  The cookies are moderately squished but not unsalvageable.  Regina doesn’t touch any of the food, though; she goes straight for the water bottle and takes four small, quick sips, pauses, repeats the pattern twice more.

Emma watches her, leans against the bars.  “They give you anything to drink all morning?” she asks quietly.

“No.”

Fuckers.  “I’ll fix that,” she promises, and Regina suddenly starts to laugh, setting the water bottle aside.

“There’s nothing to fix, Emma.  It’s done.  They’ll decide a sentence on Monday and then you won’t need to worry if they gave me anything to drink.”

Slowly, slowly, Emma looks over at those typewritten pages, then back to Regina.  “What did you do?” she whispers, feels panic clenching in her throat.

At least Regina stops laughing.  At least she looks at Emma with tired eyes when she says, so softly, “Confessed.”

Emma can’t breathe.  She almost trips while turning to her old desk, almost drops all the papers because her hands are shaking.  Three pages, with names and places and formal charges.  It feels endless.  She doesn’t recognize half the names, refuses to read the charges—until she gets to _Nolan, Kathryn (Abigail, daughter of Midas)_ and feels herself sway on her feet.  _Storybrooke_ , the line continues, _kidnapping; conspiracy to commit kidnapping; aggravated assault_.

And then, three unfamiliar names later, _Humbert, Graham (Huntsman Graham), Storybrooke, murder; Enchanted Forest, gross sexual assault_.  At the bottom of the page—and Emma can barely read it because her vision is blurry and the ink is getting wet— _Mills, Henry Jr., Storybrooke, endangering the welfare of a child_.

She can’t _breathe_.  She can’t fucking breathe and oh, God, _rape_ and _murder_ and— _no._

The papers slip from her hands.  She keeps her eyes on them because she cannot, cannot look up, can’t take a step back because that’s where he died, that’s where he stopped breathing, that’s where—she can’t.  “Graham—Graham was _gentle,”_ she finally chokes out.

“No,” Regina says quietly.  “He wasn’t.”

She doesn’t even know what that means.  She doesn’t—“So you _killed_ him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”  Her voice is trembling; she doesn’t want it to.  She wants to be as cold and stoic—

“Betray me twice, shame on me.”

Emma looks at Regina, then, and then can’t look away because there’s _nothing_ on that face.  Nothing to show for anything.  Emma doesn’t understand how someone so—she’s never once looked at Regina and seen so much ugly.  “And rape?” she whispers, and hates herself, because _why_ shouldn’t even matter—

Nothing on that face moves.  “I don’t think resignation equals consent,” Regina says, but there’s something _there_ , behind all of that, and Emma wants to forget what it sounds like because—

She has the keys to the cells.  She has the keys, she can probably jimmy this new lock and get in there and—and make her _hurt_.  Make her hurt the way she _should_.  Except all she can think of is _can you tell me what happens to a pretty young royal wife_ and it keeps twisting around into _I don’t think resignation equals consent_ and she can’t handle this.  She can’t—she can’t handle this.

 _Endangering the welfare of a child_ glares up at Emma from the floor, and she lets her knees finally give, sits slumped up against the bars and puts her head in her hands because she knows that one.  She knows what it really means.  She knows that no matter what else, Regina’s never done that.  “You didn’t poison Henry.”  Regina makes some small sound of protest, but Emma just shakes her head.  “You tried to poison me.  Henry ate it instead.  But you didn’t poison _him_.  It’s different.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s different.  And—and child endangerment…”  She starts to laugh.  It’s all she can do.  It’s all she can do because rape and murder but not child endangerment.  Regina would never do that.  Not to Henry.  Emma knows what that really is.

“I told you.  The restraining spell, the vines—“

“Thorns?”

The whimper, the hurt little sob—that’s how she knows.  The way Regina had clawed at her own palms when she’d first talked about it.  Out of line, certainly.  But not child endangerment.  Emma knows what that is.

But, God—rape and murder.  “You’ve never been an unfit mother, Regina,” she whispers, and stares at the floor, at where they’d zipped up a body bag while she gave a tearless, stoic statement.  “God help me, because all of this—all of this means you’re a _monster_ , but you’ve never been an unfit mother.”

And there, that barely-there smile of dying.  She knows that smile.  That first week of dreaming of the diner, that was the only smile she ever saw.  She knows that smile.

Emma puts her head back in her hands, because everything is fucked.

* * *

Archie’s office hasn’t changed.  He still keeps a small fire going, and she’s grateful for something to watch beside Pongo’s sleepy gaze.  

“Is magic an addiction?”

Archie sits back in his chair, clasps his hands together.  “Why do you ask?”

Her right leg is jumping and she can’t make it stop because conditioned responses to sitting alone in a therapist’s office are a bitch.  “Because—because I can forgive an addict.  I can.  I can forgive an addict almost anything because I’ve _seen_ the other side of that.  I’ve seen people cold turkey and fail at rehab over and over again and I’ve seen what people will do for just one fix and I _get_ that.  That’s fucked up biology and I _get_ that.  So—so tell me it’s an addiction.  Tell me magic is an addiction just like coke and meth and—and—“

“And what?  You’ll forgive her?  You’ll support her?  You’ll fight for her?”  

The tone of his voice doesn’t match the challenge in his actual words.  She wants to learn how to do that, how to fight someone without lifting a finger.

“Just—just tell me that it’s an addiction.”

“I don’t know, Emma.  I don’t know.”

“But you’ve been working with her—“

He looks at her flatly, says nothing.

“You can’t even say if it’s an addiction or not?”

“Emma.”

“You know what she’s done.”

“To an extent.”

Fucking therapist speak.  “But you don’t think—you don’t feel like—Jesus _,_ what she’s done to people…”  She trails off, twists her hands together in her lap.  “I just—I don’t know which way is up, Archie.  Because—fuck.  Everything that’s logical says don’t fight for her, but—I can’t _not_.  She’s too important.”  And then she holds her hands out, palms up, like surrender, because everything is _fucked_.  

“Why?”

“Because—she’s my kid’s _mom_.”

Archie looks at her for a long moment.  “What does that mean to you?”

She wants to say so much.  She wants to tell him how sick she’d been, for days, at the idea of giving her baby over to the system that made her.  How she’d begged and begged for the social worker to find a way to give him a home.  How, when they told her that they’d found someone, she’d wept.  She wants to tell him that Regina saved Henry, that she’s always been his best chance, that for ten years she’s given Henry more than Emma ever dreamed of for him.

It won’t leave her throat.  None of it will leave her throat.  “I—you know my history.  Kind of.  Regina put enough of it in the paper.”  Archie raises an eyebrow, and she scoffs.  “Yeah, I know, I should give a fuck, right?  I should hold that against her.”

“But you don’t.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She wants to tell Archie that she never made it through tenth grade, but Henry has a college fund and reads three grade levels above expectations.  She wants to tell him that between her and Neal, Henry should’ve been an amoral kleptomaniac but he’s a _good_ kid, even if he’s got a sixth sense for trouble and a con-man’s imagination.  He’s a good boy.  He’s a goddamn miracle.

It takes a long minute for her voice to come back to her, and all she can use it for is to ask, hoarsely, “Can she—is she capable of change?  Because—I’m fucked in the head, when it comes to her.  She showed me—she told me—“  Emma stops talking, and Archie waits patiently.  “The Regina I know isn’t the Regina _they_ know, and I don’t know how to trust a month of dreams over their years and years of pain.  Over all the things on that list.  But you—you saw it all.  You’ve seen both.  She—she showed you, too.  Was it—is she real?  Is she real?”

Archie says nothing, and she really hates herself for expecting him to say anything, because even if this is all make-believe, and even if he’s fucked up before, there are rules to this game.  Therapists don’t tell.  There are rules.

But he finally sighs, relaxes a little in his chair.  “Are you the same person you were ten years ago?” he asks her, and something between her lungs loosens.

“A little bit.”

“How so?”

“I’m—I’m rough around the edges.  Rude.  Drifter.  Don’t trust anyone.  Lone wolf type.”

And Archie straight-up _grins_ at her.  “And yet here you are, with friends.  Leaving aside your new familial ties—before the curse broke, you trusted Mary Margaret.  You trusted Ruby.  You had a roommate, friends, a place in a community.  You ran for Sheriff, which requires at least some attachment to the town.”

“I was pissed off and manipulated,” she interrupts, but he clearly doesn’t buy it and she can’t help but smile back.

“Of course some things about you carry through your life, Emma.  But you know that you’ve grown and changed over the past ten years.  Giving up your son, getting out of jail, rebuilding your life—these are things that will change a person.”

“What’s your point?”

His smile softens.  “Is it so hard to believe that coming to a new world, adopting a son, rebuilding a life, would do the same to Regina?”

She sits silent for a while, stares at Pongo’s side rising and falling as he sleeps.  Thinks about the Regina she’d met the first night, those soft eyes and that scared mouth, then the one who she’d met the next day, the threats and the ice and the danger.  Thinks about _rape_ and feels nausea rising in her throat.  Thinks about all the things Graham said about not feeling but never not wanting—did he want?  Was it real want?  

What is _real_?

She knows some real things, knows sixteen and so in love and then seventeen and married to a stranger three times as old.  Knows sixteen and so in love and seventeen and incarcerated and she loses the thread of it, all of it.  Nothing’s right, nothing makes sense; everything hurts too much.

“Henry believes in her,” she finally says.

A small, non-committal noise.  Fucking therapists.  “Henry believes very strongly, when he believes.”

She tilts her head back, stares at the ceiling and then closes her eyes.  “Mark Purbeck—“ and she stops again, because she can’t find words.  “Purbeck said she was hard.  A hard queen but a good queen.  That she looked out for her own.”

He waits again, and she doesn’t know how he has the patience for this gig.  “What does _that_ mean to you?”

She huffs out a breath, finally looks back down.  “It’s exactly right.  She’s a hardass but she’s good at her job.  This whole fucking town ran like clockwork.  And she looked out for her own.  But her own was just Henry.  Nobody else.  Nobody else stood a fucking chance.  Everyone else was disposable.  Graham.  Kathryn.  Sydney.”

“Sounds like a lonely way to live.”

She can’t help the sneer that twists her lips.  “Don’t pull that shit, Archie.  Don’t.  Okay?  Yeah, I get that.  Yeah, I see the fucking parallels.  But I never killed anyone to keep my shit together.  I never arranged for someone to get killed.  I never _raped_ anyone.  I never set anybody up to take the fall for my bullshit.  Okay?  She’s _fucked up_.”  She doesn’t know if she means action or state of being but maybe it’s both and maybe it’s neither and she’s just so goddamn confused.  “She’s fucked up, Archie.  And I don’t know how to make that fit, and everything in me says I _have_ to make it fit.”

He sits silent, unmoving, looks away.  “Magic… if we’re continuing with the drug analogy, magic would be… a dealer.  The best dealer.  The one with the most potent cocktail.”

“So—so, what?  Her addiction is fucking up people’s lives?”

“Is that what you think?”

“Goddamnit, Archie—I’m asking you why the fuck I should trust her when she’s _killed_ people.  And if—if I do trust her—how can I trust myself, because—because _we_ killed someone.”

Archie takes his glasses off.  When he looks back at her, she’s startled by how bright his eyes are, how blue.  “I’ve killed people.”

 _The fuck_.

“Two people.  Geppetto’s parents, actually.  Their names were Stefano and Donna.”

 _The fuck_.

“I tried to escape my circumstances, and in doing so I turned his parents into wooden puppets.”

She wants to get up and fucking _leave_ , but she can’t move her legs.  She can’t lift her arms.  “What the _fuck_ ,” she whispers.

“Yes.  And when I realized what I’d done, I begged for an escape.  And I got one.  I became a cricket.  I never—I never _paid_ for their deaths.  Not the way I should have.  The way I would have, if I’d stayed a man.  But I tried.”

“He’s your _best friend_.”  What the fuck is this world.  What _the fuck_ is this world that all these people come from?

“Yes.”  Archie finally looks down, then out the window.  “Because my penance was to devote my life to him.  To be his conscience, to be aware of right and wrong and to always push for right.”  He sighs, shrinks in his chair a little.  “And even then, I failed—when it mattered the most.”

When everything clicks together, she feels acid at the back of her throat.  “The curse.  The wardrobe.”  Archie hesitates, and she gets it then, too.  That he never meant for this conversation to take this turn.  That he’d wanted to show her that everyone can change, even if they’d fucked up—but _fuck that_.  “Ruby said—said Geppetto made it.  Said it could only fit one.  That I was early so it had to be me, alone.  But then—August.  And I’ve been trying to figure it out, but I couldn’t, because…”

She starts to laugh, and Archie leans forward, eyes wide.  “Emma—“

“Because Geppetto decided his _puppet-boy_ could do as good a job as a _parent_.”  And then she gets a little hysterical, because _puppets_.  God.  Parents into puppets and puppets into children and _fuck this._

“Emma, wait—“

She gets her legs back in a rush of adrenaline and anger and hurt.  “No.  No.  This—you’ve been a real help, Archie,” and she’s still laughing, softly, under her breath.  “A real help.  Just cleared _everything_ right up.”  Pongo lifts his head when she stands, and she just looks at his big brown eyes.  Wonders who he was, back there.  Who he fucked over.  If maybe he’s the only one who didn’t ruin someone else’s life.

She stops laughing because there’s salt in the corners of her eyes and her throat’s closing up, and she just shakes her head at Archie and slams the office door behind her.

* * *

The logical thing to do would be to go home.  Home would be the logical, rational, comfortable place to go.  Home to her mother and her father and her son and absolute, unconditional love—love so thick it stifles and suffocates and claws at her throat.

She goes, instead, to the station.  Left and Right Guard are both back in position, but one hard look at Left and they shuffle out through the double doors again.  She doesn’t look at—at Regina, because she just—

Emma goes into her office and drops into her chair, scowls and adjusts the height to fit her again.  Things on her desk are all out of place; there are about fifty “Take a Message” sheets stacked next to the phone and her pen cup is chipped and missing all of the blue pens.

It’s inevitable, really; the pen cup is in direct line with the middle cell, and her eyes drift up naturally, drawn to the green of her loaned henley and the way the last of the day’s light makes Regina look a little more alive than in the morning.  A little more alive, because she still looks—she needs a shower, and proper sleep, and maybe more water, but Emma—she just _can’t_ and can’t _not_.  She definitely can’t sit here and look at Regina and have Regina looking back at her like—like whatever way she is, like Emma’s everything and nothing and that needs to _stop_ , everyone needs to _stop that_.

She puts her head down on the middle of the blotter, tries to focus and visualize how she used to keep things and where she used to keep things, because sooner or later she’s going to need her gun again and wetsoftred _squish_ —fuck.  Fuck, fuck, fuck, she’s too old to cry like this, she’s too damn used to this, she has to stop because no one should see her like this least of all—

“Emma.”

Her chair skitters back and she takes the three steps to get around her desk, keeps her head down and slams the door closed, hard enough to rattle the glass in the walls and send something rolling off behind one of the filing cabinets.  Even with her eyes down, she can see Regina’s whole body react to the sudden, violent movements, and it’s just enough to bring her to her knees against the door with a stifled, aching sob.

Because she thinks of Geppetto, stealing her chance for a mother and a father to give his puppet boy a life, any life at all, and she hates him for it, she does, but…  But she thinks of Henry and his sleepy little smile, and what wouldn’t a parent do for their child?  And yeah, August is a little shit and when she sees him again, she’s pouring a jar of termites on him, but being in the wardrobe to start with—that wasn’t on him.  Being saved wasn’t his choice, even if everything else—like leaving her, like leaving her, like _leaving_ her—was.

But what wouldn’t a parent do for a child?  Because there’s Regina, sitting there in her cell, and Emma thinks wetsoftred _squish_ and thinks it hard, feels the fear and the rage and the nausea and the way it felt to hack through bone.  Nothing can be so simple as judgment, not ever again, because—what wouldn’t a parent do for a child?  

What wouldn’t a child do for herself?

When she thinks she can breathe without hiccuping sobs, she stands up, scrubs at her face roughly.  Regina will pretend with her, she already knows that.   They have always been so very good at pretending.

Regina looks up from her hands as soon as Emma opens the office door, watches her pick her way around the empty desks and stay the hell away from the middle of the room and drag the folding chair on the right of the cell over about a foot.  Emma straddles the chair out of habit, because it makes her feel more like herself, because princesses and saviors don’t do things like that; Regina makes no comment, doesn’t look away from her eyes.  She’s sitting with her back against the adjoining cell’s bars and her knees pulled up to her chest and she looks so small, so _human_.  Even the way Regina’s folded her hands—palms up, left cradling right, fingers curled in like there’s pain somewhere in the wrist—seems vulnerable.

If only it felt like an act.  If only it meant anything but _I’m tired_.

Emma can only ask with her eyes closed, with her head down on the back of the chair and her hair falling around her face.  “Who did this to you?” she whispers, and the words are barely out of her mouth before she feels her throat tightening, clamping shut to make sure she doesn’t say anything else stupid.

Regina doesn’t react, not in any way Emma can pick up on.  No sighs, no shifting, Emma can’t even hear her breathing.  “You saw my arrest.”

“Don’t play dumb.”

This time, she can hear Regina hold a breath, release it slowly through her nose.  Her old _don’t kill the Sheriff_ trick.  At least some things—

“No one.”

Bullshit.  “Don’t fuck around, Regina.  No one gets this way on their own.”

“And what way is that, dear?”

She can’t help the way her mouth curls into a sneer, the way she snarls _you know_ in response.  Because of all the things to stay consistent, Regina’s bullshit condescension routine is the one Emma really cannot handle.  Not today.  Not now.  Not after—not after all of this.

The thing is, she doesn’t even know what way she’s talking about.  Regina’s not _heartless_ and she’s not _cold_ and she’s not _evil_ because Henry _exists_ , and—and even if he didn’t, Emma’s seen Regina grieve, and she’s seen her laugh, and there’s too much heart in her for any of those words to fit.  Nothing fits anymore.  Nothing’s where it belongs.

“The way you are,” she settles on, finally looking up.  “Capable of—of these—“

“Crimes?” Regina fills in, pitch rising just slightly.  There’s a flicker of emotion just under those dark, dark eyes, but it’s too fast; all Emma really gets to see is the mask settling into place again.

Emma closes her eyes in frustration, tries to swallow and get her throat to open up again.  “And it was all—all for him?  All for Daniel?” she asks again, squeezes the words out of her throat.

And Regina laughs, one single syllable, and she smiles that dying smile, and Emma feels that itching explode on the soles of her feet again.  “Oh, no, dear,” Regina says softly, still smiling, and closes her eyes.  “No.  In the end, it was all for me.”

* * *

Neither one of them is remotely prepared for the joint whirlwind of Henry and Ruby to come bounding into the station.  Regina actually jumps and then stills, but Emma lunges forward for the indictment pages, grabs and crumples them into the bottom of the waste bin before Henry even gets past the first desk.

She’s grateful she gets that done before she looks at his face, because the shock all around his eyes freezes her in her place.  He hasn’t looked her way yet; he can’t take his eyes away from Regina, who stares back with shining eyes and clenching fists and the first almost-real smile in days.  “Henry—sweetheart—what are you doing here?”

Henry’s mouth hangs open, but his eyes finally track over to Emma.  She manages to get to her feet while Ruby takes a step forward, holding a large brown bag against her hip.  “We come bearing dinner,” she explains, and gives one of those kind, clear smiles.  “Figured they couldn’t keep us out if we had burgers.”

Finally, finally, Henry closes his mouth and takes a step forward, then another, then runs to the cell and puts his arms through, hugs his mother as hard as he can, even with the bars in the way.  “It’s gonna be okay, Mom.  Emma’s gonna get you out, it’s gonna be okay.”

Before Regina even looks over at her—and she will, of course she will—Emma loses her shit, and she mumbles something about time and privacy and flees to her office.  Because now, more than ever, she understands what it’s like to have Henry believe in an ill-fitting identity, understands just how bitter it tastes.

Tapping on her door makes her look up; Ruby stands on the other side, holding up a foil-wrapped round, and Emma nods her in.  “Bacon burger,” Ruby announces, places it on the corner of the desk, “and there’s a big thing of sweet potato fries out there, but the kid’s going to town on them right now, so…”

Emma tries to smile.  She really does.  But looking at Ruby means looking just past her, to where Henry’s already sitting in the folding chair, a styrofoam clamshell of fries cradled in his lap.  He’s sitting right up against the bars, dispensing handfuls of fries into the torn-off top half of the clamshell on Regina’s side.  And Regina—Emma has to look away, because those dark, dark eyes are soft and Regina’s running her fingers through Henry’s hair, trying to fix the no-part look he has going, and she’s _smiling_ —

A soft touch to her wrist brings Emma back, and Ruby gently pushes her into her chair, puts the burger in the middle of the blotter.  “You doing okay?”

Of course she’s not okay.  So she says, “Does she even eat fries?” and Ruby smiles like she understands what Emma really means.  

“Friday fries,” she answers.  “Sweet potato, unsalted, but they both love ‘em.”

“Every Friday?”

“Every Friday.”

Fuck.  There’s so much she doesn’t— _fuck._ “What do I do, Ruby?” Emma whispers, watches Regina sip from Henry’s drink and make a face, listens to his laugh.

Ruby looks over at the two of them and smiles that hazy smile, looks back at Emma with nothing but absolute kindness.  “Your best, Em.”  She reaches out, squeezes Emma’s forearm briefly but fiercely.  It’s a strange motion, but it feels genuine and right now, Emma needs everything that’s genuine and real.  “That’s all you can ever do.”

She should leave it alone—she should _really_ leave it alone, because Red is Snow’s best friend, but Ruby is _her_ friend, and even if Emma doesn’t know much about what that means, she does know everything about putting her foot in her mouth.  “Why don’t you hate her?  You and Granny.  You—why?”

Red is Snow’s best friend, but Ruby is _her_ friend, and that means something to Ruby, too.  “We… We learned a lot about what  all a messed-up world can do.  And yeah, here’s messed up, but…”

It’s a non-answer as much as it’s an answer, but Emma accepts it because some things just don’t translate.  Like watching Henry sleep.  Like seeing Regina really smile for the first time in days.  Like believing in magic.

Ruby takes a step back, tilts her head towards the cells.  “Come have some fries, when you’re ready.”

Emma just nods, sits back in her chair and watches her son and his mother, watches how Regina’s smile changes just slightly but doesn’t fade when Ruby sits down in the other chair.  She makes herself look away, because—well.  Everything is fucked, anyway, and she’s hungry.

* * *

She should go home after dinner, should walk Henry back and be with her _family_ , but she doesn’t.  She can’t.  She sits on the floor in front of the bars and tries not to look at the woman on the other side, because if she looks she’s going to see and she has no idea what to do if she sees _Regina_ and not _queen_ or if she sees _evil_ and not _mother_.

Of course, Regina never makes things easy for her, and comes to sit right next to Emma, leaning her left shoulder against the bars and curling her legs against her chest.  So Emma looks, and looks, and can’t not look, until Regina finally clears her throat.  “What was it like?”

“What was what like?” 

“Being pregnant.”

Her whole body freezes up, and instinct says _don’t talk_ , because she never talks about it.  But the way Regina looks at her and all the love the mere idea of Henry brings out in those dark, dark eyes—Emma sighs, closes her eyes and does her best to not see.  “I was in jail,” she starts, hopes it covers it.  “It sucked.”

And that should be the end of it, but the words rise up anyway, eleven years old and still clawed, and surge from her mouth with agonizing force.  “The cravings were the worst.  Because—God, for three straight weeks I craved peaches, and they’ll make concessions for you but fresh fruit isn’t on the list.  My social worker, she got me one of those Dole cups, with the syrup and everything, but—I think I went half insane, on that one.  The others I could kind of make do, figure out if it was salt or carbs or whatever that I was craving.  But peaches…”

Regina stays silent, and Emma expects that, because when Regina does things like this, when she pulls just so on the one thread that unravels a person, she stands back and watches.  Emma knows this, expects this, and still—still, she keeps talking, keeps giving, because she _looked_ , and what else is she supposed to do?

“I carried high.  That’s what the doc kept telling me, like that meant something to me.  Later on, she told me it was the reason I wasn’t pissing every ten minutes, which—thank God, right?  I carried high.  They put me in solitary, when I started showing, so mostly I just read.  That social worker, she managed to get a book on pregnancy fitness into the library, little tips like how to keep ankle swelling down and keep moving without overexerting, things like that.”

“She sounds… nice.”

That’s not part of the script.  Regina isn’t supposed to talk—the way Emma wasn’t supposed to talk, the way all of those dreams of tears and truth weren’t supposed to happen—so the sentence hangs in the air for a moment longer than it should.  It hangs and Emma opens her eyes, looks up at Regina and sees too many things, exhaustion and sorrow and grief and rage and something so unspeakably bright that she almost loses her words.  “She was.  She was kind.  She—I told her—“ and she stops, because this is the part; this is the part that will never not burn her up inside.  “She’s the one who told me about this agency.  That for a prison baby, his chances would be better.”

That particular smile, hesitant but true, and Emma closes her eyes again and puts her head down.  “We both owe her, then.”

She doesn’t know which way is up and is starting to think it wouldn’t matter if she did.  “Yeah.  Guess we do.”

* * *

Her phone goes off at ten; Henry’s squinty smile flashes at both of them from the screen.  “Emma, are you coming home?” he asks in this quiet little voice, like maybe he’s trying not to be heard.

Regina’s eyes are on the phone and a hollow type of hungry that just adds to the guilt stabbing all through Emma’s stomach.  “Yeah, kid, real soon.  Sorry, I lost track of time.”

“Are you still with Mom?”

She knows Regina can hear, even if his voice is tinny and high, because that hunger turns hopeful and Emma just wants to close her eyes forever.  “Yeah.”

“Can I talk to her?”

She hands the phone over without another word, and when Regina chokes out, “Hi, sweetheart,” Emma does close her eyes, tries to close her ears, but there’s sweetness to Regina’s words and it hits hard like a sucker punch.  “Custard, huh?  Did you like it?”  Her ears won’t close so her eyes open again, just in time to see a wavering smile, paired with, “Because we make flan, honey, with coconut milk, so it’s—you think so?  Better?”  And then that smile brightens, and she’d give anything for the only real things to be her son and his mother and all of this love.  “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Emma gets up, tries to get away from this damn conversation that she doesn’t want to be hearing, from this woman she doesn’t want to be seeing.  Not that there’s anywhere to go, the station’s an open box and the two newbies out in the vestibule will definitely take the phone away from Regina if they come back in and that’s—that’s not acceptable.

“Well, Emma can go get some and learn to make—“ and Regina stops talking because Henry’s shouting through the phone; it’s mostly static to Emma’s ears but she can guess the gist.  “Okay.  Okay.  I—I won’t talk like that.  I promise.  I promise, Henry.  Did you take your medicine already?”

How does Regina even remember all of this, anyway?  What the kid does when and should take when and whether he’s had all his shots for the year or what comfort food is to him and—

“I love you, Henry.  So, so much.”  And Emma just about loses her shit again, right around the moment when Regina stifles something that sounds a lot like a whimper, like a sob.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

For a few minutes, Emma just stands at the filing cabinets, reading the same line of last year’s street parking ordinance over and over again until she’s got weeping parking meters dancing behind her eyes.  When she can finally turn around, there are thin tear tracks down Regina’s cheeks but her eyes are dry and the phone is back on Emma’s side of the bars.  “Thank you,” Regina rasps, clears her throat with a slight look of surprise.  “Thank you,” she says again, stronger.

Emma just stares, wraps her fingers around one of the drawer handles behind her and squeezes until the pain in her fingers starts to mean something, something immediate enough to get her feet moving towards the phone on the floor.  She leans over, picks it up, straightens up and there they are again, those dark, dark eyes that keep fucking everything up.

And, well, Emma’s never been one for keeping things simple, especially not when they’re already completely fucked, so she goes with her gut and reaches through the bars, grabs Regina’s wrist and the burst of acid and—and _life_ , the way everything seems to open up, the way Regina’s shoulders drop like it’s finally safe to lower her guard just a little bit, all of it tells her they’re both screwed.  “I don’t want to _see_ you,” she whispers, and prays that Regina _gets_ it, and something about the taste of orange under her tongue makes her think that it’s possible, that she’s understood, but just in case, just in case, she keeps going.  “But I can’t _not_.”

Regina doesn’t get it.  The way her upper lip is curled and the angle of her brows and that hollowness in her eyes, she doesn’t get it.  “I don’t know how to make the dreams stop.  But—if that’s—if that’s your concern, I can stay awake.”

Emma drops her wrist and adjusts to standing without whatever it is contact does to them, steps back shaking her head.  “That’s not what I meant,” she sighs, and shoves her hands into her pockets.  “That’s not what I meant at all.”

* * *

The whole afternoon was the two of them in silence and a stuffy room but Emma just doesn’t have the presence of mind to change that in a dream.  She’s still trying to wrap her head around puppets and parents because—well, frankly, she understands murder.  That part’s the only part that has a place in her brain.  

Regina’s talking—has been for more than a few seconds—and it takes a few tries for Emma to dial in, to push aside this useless and childish sense of _unfair_ that’s soaking up all her energy.  When she finally processes Regina’s words, she wishes she hadn’t.  “ _Power_?” she repeats, feels her mouth twisting down.  “You did—all of it—all of it was for _power_?”

And Regina freezes, and looks at her, and Emma watches that mouth curl into a sneer and those dark, dark eyes harden and burn.  “I would think,” Regina starts, and all of that ice is back in her voice, “that you, of all people, would understand the damage a powerless life can do.”

“Don’t you dare start justifying all of this by comparing—“

“I am not _justifying_ anything, Sheriff.  I am _telling_ you that my options were take or be taken, so I _took_.”

She wants to close her ears again, because this—this is the other side, and she wants this even less than she wanted the first version.  So she closes her eyes and shakes her head and God, the exhaustion, the whole goddamn day is clawing at her eyes.  “No.  I don’t—I didn’t—I don’t _care_ ,” she insists, and drags a hand over her face, tries to wake up.  “Just—just tell me whatever it is you had to say about the fairies and then—I don’t know, then we’ll just leave each other alone, for however long this one lasts.”

It cuts deep; she knows that, knows that in a month of sitting here every night, they’ve never just left each other alone.  Not after the first time—and Emma hadn’t planned on it then, either, but had been too weirded out to act in time.  And however much she’s become accustomed to sitting here and listening and responding and just being someplace where no one expects things lightyears beyond her abilities, it’s got to be comparable to how Regina feels about these things.  Regina _talks_ , here, is _real_ here, smiles and laughs and cries and whispers, and if there’s nowhere else for her—

She hasn’t seen Regina sit this straight since the first night.  She hasn’t seen those eyes look so empty since the Daniel night.  “I was very careful to keep your magic a secret from Rumplestiltskin.”  Regina’s voice is frigid, flat.  “Although you’ve done a spectacular job of undoing all my efforts.  Regardless, the fairies are just as dangerous.  It is in your best interests to stay away from them.”

Emma laughs in her face.  “They’re fucking _fairies_ , Regina.  With magic _dust_.”

“Reul Ghorm is not a _fucking fairy_ , you fool,” Regina hisses, leaning forward, and that sneer is back but—angry, not condescending.  Frustrated, almost.  “She is the oldest power of our world, and power only ever seeks more power.  I have no interest in seeing you enslaved like a dwarf when you are Henry’s _only_ chance, now.”

Enslaved like a—everything clicks and Emma has to cover her eyes, again.  “A dwarf?” she finally echoes, weakly, and falls back in her chair.

Just like that, Regina’s whole expression softens, shifts to slight surprise.  “You didn’t realize.”

She shakes her head.  “Enslaved?”

“As soon as magic came back, they went right back to mining.  And now guarding me, but mining—that’s the only thing they do.  You didn’t… You didn’t realize.”

She _knows_ she didn’t realize, she was off in a fucking hellhole for a month.  “Why?”

“Why are they enslaved?”  Regina shakes her head.  “I don’t know.  It’s… always been.  They hatch—“

“I’m sorry, _hatch_?”

“—Fully grown, hardy enough and dedicated enough to mine fairy dust.”

“Why do they mine it?  Is that the only way?”

Regina nods, chews on her bottom lip.  “Fairy dust… it’s inorganic, Emma.  It’s pure light magic.  It isn’t human.  It _can’t_ be.  You…”  She sighs, sits back.  “Do you know why the heart gets taken?”

Emma definitely doesn’t want to hear this.

“It’s the seat of all that’s human.  All the chaotic emotion, all the pain, all the ugliness and discord—that’s where darkness comes from.  That’s why the heart gets taken.  Because if there’s pain in it, and you take it out, the pain can’t be assuaged.  It’s a constant feed of darkness.  Even a little bit is enough, is worth it.  _That’s_ dark power.”

Emma wants to cover her ears and run.

“Light magic, there’s nothing humane about it.  It has to be mined because it isn’t human.  It’s compassionless and stone-cold and righteous and that’s why it’s _right_.  It’s never about kindness or joy or anything like that.  There’s no sentimentality to it.  It’s just… more often than not, _right_ overlaps with _good_.  And so the belief goes on.”

And then Regina smiles that dying smile; Emma doesn’t think she can take any more of that smile.  “Stop,” she whispers, but Regina sits forward, takes her wrists and holds tight, holds to the first pinch of pain.

“But you know, don’t you?  You know the difference.”

“Stop,” she whispers again.

“No.  You need to listen.  You need to hear this because you are all that’s left for Henry and if you—if you fail him…”  Regina squeezes her wrists, presses her short fingernails into Emma’s skin.  “You cannot _ever_ go to the light, Emma, just as you would never go to the dark.  Because one day they will box you into a place where you have to _hurt_ him, exactly the way the dark would, but the light will make you think it’s for his own good, and then you will be lost and he will be destroyed, and you _can’t_.”

Emma tries to pull away but Regina just holds tighter.  “Regina, please,” Emma begs, and there it is again, the look in those dark, dark eyes that she just can’t get away from.

“Promise me.”

“I don’t know—“

“Promise that you will always be _only_ for Henry.”

She doesn’t have any idea how anyone, anyone, could look at the world the way Regina does and have the strength to get out of bed ever again.  She doesn’t have any idea how thinking like that doesn’t swallow them both up in hopelessness.  “It’s not the sword.”

Those dark, dark eyes soften.  “It’s not the sword,” Regina echoes, closing her eyes for just a moment.

Emma stares, and stares, and caves.  “I promise,” she says, voice trembling, and she closes her eyes.  She doesn’t want to deal with this anymore, she can’t handle any more of this—this Regina and this promise and this fucking world where everything is life or death.  “I promise.”

When she opens her eyes, she is looking at Henry’s mussed hair and the drool trickling from his mouth and her hands are shaking over her stomach and she can’t fucking _breathe_ , and she bolts for the door.

 


	3. Oizys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks to Kate, Lynn and Dex for beta-reading and hand-holding.
> 
> This chapter is a lot of World Building 101, you know, more things the actual show writers don’t see fit to include. Storybrooke makes more sense if it’s considered a county, with an incorporated county seat surrounded by unincorporated land. (Make no mistake, it still makes no sense.) I’ve done what I can to make actual municipal code fit. Not that any of you actually care, but… I’m very particular.
> 
> Um, let’s pretend Kathryn Nolan worked at the DA’s office. Yes? Yes.
> 
> Canonically, Emma likes to punch things. I'm letting her expand her repertoire to include kicking.
> 
> Content warning: talk of non-heart organ removal.

 

> Summer after summer has ended,
> 
> balm after violence:
> 
> it does me no good
> 
> to be good to me now;
> 
> violence has changed me.

_October_ , Louise Gluck

 

* * *

 

It’s only the fact that it’s freezing outside that sends her back into the apartment; what her body wants, what her lungs want, is to hit her stride in a dead sprint to the town line, to just get somewhere where the choice is as simple as here or there.  This side or that.

But she goes back inside, sets some water to boil and wraps herself up in the throw left draped over the the back of the armchair.  It’s then that she hears it: low, rumbling, steady snoring, intermittently mixed with a high whistling semi-wheeze.  She stares across the room at her parents’ doorway, does everything she can to just observe and notate and not _feel_ anything because there’s nothing to feel.  It’s just her parents sleeping.  It’s just the sounds of her parents sleeping—

The kettle whistles louder than she expected; in the rush to get over to the stove, she stubs her toe on the edge of the island and lets out a yelping “Mother _fucker!_ ” before promptly lifting the kettle off the burner by both handle and hot metal side.  She drops it on the counter and immediately runs the cold tap of the sink until the tingling in her fingertips is less from being burned and more from being ice-watered.  

There’s a shuffling behind her, and she looks over her shoulder to see Snow wrapped in an obscenely fluffy bathrobe, squinting at her.  “Emma?  You okay?”

Not by half.  “Yeah,” she says tiredly.  “Just… kitchen klutz.  The usual.  Sorry to wake you.”

Snow _hmm_ s in response, comes around the island and grabs two mugs from the top shelf.  “It’s not even six,” she observes, eyes slowly opening more.  “What are you doing up?”

Emma silently watches Snow grab two tea bags, put one and a half sugars into one mug and four into the other, pour water into both.  “Felt like getting an early start,” she says, and tries to rip out the helpless feeling in her gut.

Snow pauses in her movements before returning the kettle to the stovetop.  “I see.”  She hands the four-sugar tea to Emma, smiles brightly.  “So, what’s on the agenda?”

“Huh?”

“For the day,” Snow clarifies.  “That you should get an early start.”

Emma takes three semi-sips, tries to burn her tongue enough to stall.  What is she going to say, _Oh, well, first I’m going to bring your arch-nemesis breakfast, and then I might cry a little more, and then I’ll probably sit on the floor and listen to her talk about vengeance and murder and slavery and destruction because at least that shit makes sense_?  

“Just… Sheriff stuff,” she settles on, with a shrug.  “Paperwork.  Inventory.  Got some Deputy volunteers, should probably sort through their files and figure out who’s right for the job.”

Snow leans back against the counter, nods and holds her mug just under her chin, basking in the steam.  Mary Margaret only did that when she felt a cold coming on.  “So you’ll be at the station again?”

A slow, prickling sensation curls between Emma’s shoulder blades.  “Maybe,” she says with another shrug.  “Maybe do a walk around, see what’s up.  Lobster shack got painted, I didn’t even recognize it.”

Snow smiles again, just as bright as before.  “That sounds like a great idea.  You can introduce yourself to more people, too.”

“Uh—yeah, I guess.  They all mostly know me already, from the election, but maybe a reminder wouldn’t hurt.”

Snow savors her first full sip, all one and a half sugars of it.  “Well, of course they do, but—you know, introduce yourself as part of our family.  Even if they know you as the Sheriff, most people won’t know you as a princess.”

It’s excruciating work to keep her eyes soft and her jaw relaxed.  Hiding behind the mug helps.  “Right,” is all Emma manages to get out, but at least it sounds neutral.

Snow is giving her that look again, the _sweet, sweet girl_ look.  “I’ve missed you,” she begins, and Emma tightens her grip on her mug.  “You’ve been so… busy, these last few days.”

“It’s been a little chaotic.”  But she tries for a smile, even as she thinks of ways to talk around the topic of Regina.  “Hopefully it’ll settle down soon.”

That blinding, bright smile again.  “Fingers crossed,” Snow agrees, and then lifts her eyebrows as though she’s just remembered something.  “Oh!  Your father and I were talking last night, and we thought—well, this apartment can work with three, but four isn’t sustainable as is, so, we took a look around the building and it turns out that—well, you know the blank wall in your room?  The other side of that is just an open storage space, and the door to it is bricked over so obviously it’s not in use.  So we were thinking, maybe we could knock down that wall, split the space evenly into your room and a room for Henry, too.  What do you think?”

The prickling between Emma’s shoulder blades sinks deeper, like claws in her skin.  She leans forward onto the island, puts her mug down and places her palms flat, tries to stay soft because it’s early as fuck, but— _Jesus._ “I don’t think we’ll need it,” she starts.

Snow cocks her head, frowns.  “But—Emma, Henry will need his own room at some point—“

“He has one.”  Snow’s expression doesn’t change and Emma presses her fingers into the countertop as hard as she can.  “My understanding, Snow, was that Henry staying here was temporary.  That when he and Regina reached a point where they trusted each other again, he’d be going _home_.  With his _mother_.”

“Emma,” Snow says, and it’s full of warning.  Like she’s fourteen and talking back with a little too much sass.  

“Now, last time I checked, he _asked_ to go home, except we had a Code Blue Cora threat, so he had to stay here with all the magic rocks and shit.  And then your buddies put Regina in jail, so yeah, Henry’s still staying here.  But he asked to go home, so as soon as Regina’s out—“

And then she stops, because Snow isn’t looking at her anymore, and it’s strange how lack of eye contact can connect all the dots.  “I think you need to face the possibility that she will not be released, Emma.  And on the remote chance she _is_ , you definitely need to think about the reality of everything she’s done.  She can’t—she can’t be trusted, Emma, and definitely not with your—“

“Do _not_ finish that sentence,” Emma hisses.

When Snow looks up, that hardness, the odd kind of brutality that went with the bow and the arrows and the unblinking stare, has settled into her eyes.  “Two months ago, you were ready to take him away from her by force.”

“Two months ago, I thought she had her friend kidnapped and drugged just to—to fuck with you.”

Having Snow look at her—having her mother look at her with such… disappointment—Emma already knows this one won’t end well, in any way.  “That would have been the _least_ of her crimes.”

“And what would be the least of yours?”

Direct hit.  Snow draws back with a gasp, all that brutality fading away into hurt.  “You—Emma, you _know_ that I only ever—“

“I don’t care,” she interrupts, exhausted.  “I genuinely don’t _care_ what you did or why.  That’s not the point.”

“So what are you—“

“Emma?”  They both turn to the stairs, where Henry’s standing rubbing his eyes.  “Did I oversleep?” he mumbles, and Emma looks at his toes curling over the edge of the stair and feels those claws in her back reach straight into her heart.

“Nah, kid, we’re just up early,” she assures him, and smiles for him.  “Did we wake you?”

“Kinda.”

“Sorry.  Go back to bed.”  And then she hesitates, takes in the way he’s scowling in the light from the kitchen.  “Unless you want to get an early start, surprise your mom, maybe?”

His whole face brightens, lopsided grin sweeping over his mouth.  “Can we bring her pancakes?”

“If we get to Granny’s before she starts on that damn omelette.”  Henry snickers, and those claws ease up a little.  “Tell you what.  Go hop in the shower, we’ll beat the morning rush at the diner and then I’ll walk you to the station.”

His smile fades just a little.  “You’re not coming in?”

“Gotta take care of some Sheriff stuff around town first.  Besides, you guys should get to enjoy your time without me making it awkward, right?”

“You don’t make it awkward,” Henry says quickly, but then he thinks a little.  “But I think Mom likes just-us time.”

Emma nods, and gestures to the bathroom.  “Go on.  Use up all the hot water.”

He sticks his tongue out, then runs into the bathroom and closes the door softly behind him.  As soon as it clicks shut, she lets her torso relax, lowers her elbows to the countertop and curves her body over her still-full mug.  She knows something, now: it shouldn’t be this hard.  It shouldn’t end up being this hard for him.

There’s a soft touch to her right fist, a heavy sigh.  “I don’t want us to fight, Emma.  We—we have so much time to make up for, I don’t want us to waste it arguing.  I just… We should talk about these things, about what’s going on, but you’ve been… distant, since we got back.”  Emma raises her head, because something about Snow’s tone is just shy of self-pitying but most of it is plainly mournful.  Snow’s looking down at their hands, trying to—say it gently?  Say it right?  “You talk to Henry, and Ruby, and you talk to your father, and you’ve spent _hours_ with Regina, but you won’t talk to me.  You won’t… it feels like you don’t come home because of _me_.”

There are a million ways for her to respond, but there’s one and a half spoonfuls of truth to what Snow’s said.  So she starts with, “Mary Margaret takes her tea with two sugars,” and Snow snaps her head up.  They just stare at each other for a long moment, Snow with confusion and incredulity in her eyes and around her mouth.  Emma just feels tired.  “Two sugars, put in last.  You put one and a half in yours. Four in mine, but one and a half in yours, and before the water.”

“You—you always take four.”

And Emma smiles, so very tired, and withdraws her hand from Snow’s.  “Exactly.”

 

* * *

 

Anything is better than sitting outside of her own station on Saturday morning like a lonely stalker, so while Henry takes his mother a short stack of apple cinnamon pancakes, Emma walks a large loop around the school complex and ignores the graffiti on the back wall of the gymnasium, choosing to duck her head and pick her way through Storybrooke’s backstreets while most of the town is still asleep.  A month has changed more than a few paint choices.  The traffic light on the corner of Blackford and Glover is actually just _gone_ , replaced by four hand-painted stop signs posted on each corner on—yep, those are definitely mop handles, and the signs aren’t even octagons, just big pieces of cardboard that better have a coat of shellac on them if they’re going to survive the rain tonight.  Emma sighs, lets her head roll back before straightening her spine and continuing on her walk.  It’s officially her problem again, same as the huge “40 Thievez” tag back at the school.  

She keeps going down Glover, makes reluctant eye contact with Tom Duhon sitting on his porch.  He’s smoking something that Emma’s just gonna pretend is a regular cigarette; he doesn’t even bat an eye when he sees her, simply takes another pull and watches her the entire way across his yard.  Emma looks across the street for respite and immediately wishes she hadn’t, because Izzy Fisher’s black eye is looking especially fresh this morning but there’ve been enough domestic disturbance calls from the neighbors for Emma to know proactive involvement is never welcome.

Some shit doesn’t change, curse or no curse.

She avoids Main like the plague, loops the long way around to come back to the station and the town green.  No texts from Henry, so she figures he’s still in there and scuffs her way across the grass to one of the memorial arbors, curls up on the bench and wishes, idly, for coffee.  Or hot chocolate.  Or Irish coffee.  Or maybe a bellini.  Really, at this point in her life, she should be indulging in the occasional brunch of shame, not world-jumping and breaking curses and saving the day, especially when saving comes with so many… _problems_.

It’s not the sword.  If it were the sword, she could fix it; that much, she believes about magic.  But—but if it’s not the sword, then it’s… then it’s this-world, and she’s got twenty-nine years of this world assuring her she’s no savior.

The real problem is that Snow has a point.  They might banish Regina; what then?  Would Henry go?  Stay?  Split time between the mother with no idea how to exist in the real world and the mother with no idea how to exist in the fairy tale world?  Or—or they might put Regina to death, and what then?  Would Emma just move into her house, with her son and her whole existence, write over all of it like it didn’t matter?

Would she even be able to let it get that far?  Just the idea of Regina standing before a firing squad or kneeling with a sword to her neck or—or—

Wet. Soft. Red. _Squish_.

Her stomach twists violently; she leans over a clump of spider grass, ready to spit out whatever rises up, but nothing comes.  She’s grateful, sinks back against the bench and closes her eyes, thinks of not red, not red, not red, thinks of green, pale green like the spider grass, vibrant green like pine needles, deep green like her favorite henley—

Sighing heavily, she opens her eyes and shakes her head to clear all the colors away. There’s white peacoat coming up the street, and she hones in on it and zones out until she realizes that the coat is stopped at the door to the station.  White coat, blonde waves: Kathryn.

The knot of tension in the pit of her stomach stays solid and insistent for all eighteen minutes that Kathryn is inside.  She comes out with Henry; Emma’s phone buzzes as soon as the door clicks shut behind them, and they head off in the direction of the apartment, Kathryn with her head tilted attentively towards Henry.

God, Regina’s _fucked up_.

Emma looks down at the text from Henry: _Mom loved pancakes! Did u kno they’re her fav?  Can we get tmrw 2?  Princess Abigail walking me back now._

Fuck Regina, _everything’s_ fucked up.

When she’s certain that Kathryn and Henry have made it far enough down Main, she gets up and jogs over to the coffee shop across from the station, gets a large for herself and a cappuccino just in case, then heads into the station, nods to Doc and Jeremy before looking at Regina.  “Morning.”

Regina looks terrible, dark circles under her red, red eyes standing out more against her increasingly washed-out skin.  “Good morning,” she responds quietly, keeping steady eye contact.

So Emma gives her a small smile and holds the cappuccino through the bars.  “Not your bonbon thing, but still fancy.”

The barest flicker of a smile tugs at that mouth.  “Thank you.”

Emma retreats to her office, closes the door and buries herself in the property damage and requisition forms for the school and that intersection, and the pile of deputy applications—all of which have multiple cross-outs and false starts on the “Name” line and versions of “knight” on the “Relevant experience” section—and counting the number of bullets missing from the ammo drawer.

She keeps going until her stomach starts to cave in on itself from hunger.  When she looks up, the Purbeck brothers have replaced the two dwarves and she takes a moment to freak out over missing the shift change entirely.  Julian has a file folder in his hands and is facing Regina, listening intently to whatever it is she’s explaining to him, and Andre cuts in once or twice with short questions.  Emma hopes like hell they’re talking payroll.

Opening her door quietly, she gives the three of them a curt nod and heads toward the door, then pauses, waits for a break in the dialogue.  “The issue, though, is that if we don’t fully collect, we won’t be able to meet last year’s benchmark and pay out salaries at the same time—it has to be one or the other, and if—“

Regina holds up a hand to silence Julian, focuses those dark, dark eyes on Emma.  “Sheriff?” she asks, voice all velvet.

It’s probably in her best interest to know what the hell they’re talking about, but this small, beautiful, selfish part of her thinks that Julian’s got the head for numbers, so let him figure some shit out.  Thinks, _let someone else do some fucking saving around here_.  Thinks, _without her, this place is going to crumble._

She clears her throat.  “I was just gonna grab a snack, fries or something.  Any of you want something?”

The brothers look at each other uncertainly, then look at Regina as if to clear it with her.  For a moment, Emma thinks that Regina’s hiding a smile, but all she does is gesture in Emma’s direction.  “Cup of coffee would be great,” Julian says tentatively, and Andre nods in agreement.  Regina says nothing, but Emma sees the way she’s holding the empty cappuccino cup and the two empty water bottles at her feet and smiles at her, looks pointedly at the water bottles and gets a nod in confirmation.

The line at Granny’s is ridiculous; by the time Emma comes out with her wedge fries, two cups of coffee and two water bottles all balanced between hands, elbows and underboob, it’s been nearly twenty minutes.  She plans to take her time walking back, careful to keep the bottles tucked against her body, but doesn’t even make it past the hardware store when she’s blindsided by—Andre?

His face is red and his fists are clenched and if she had any basis for judgment, she’d say he was on the verge of either tears or a primal scream.  “Whoa—whoa, Andre, what’s going on?  You okay?  Did something happen?”

“Did you know?” he demands, leaning in over her.

She didn’t realize how tall he is.  How solid the weight on his bones is.  For the first time, she actually thinks about what she learned yesterday: Andre and Julian were once knights, selected for a queen’s guard.  An _Evil Queen’s_ guard.  

She takes a step back.  “Hey, hey, easy.  Did I know what?”

His eyes—deep-set and black, black, black—search her face, moving rapidly, erratically.  “Did you know what she _did_?”

Emma feels sick.  She can’t—no more.  No more of Regina’s crimes; Emma can’t deal with any more.  “What did she do?” she asks quietly.

When Andre’s shoulders slump, his whole broad body crumpling in on itself—Emma feels sick.  “He had a body.  He _had_ a body and she _traded_ it.  She took his body from us!  She had—she had no right, no right to do that to us, we _loved_ her, we would have done anything but she took his body—she had no right!”

Oh, _fuck_.

Andre looks at her, takes a deep breath, tries to rein himself in.  “How—how the hell am I supposed to tell my father this?” he asks.

As if Emma has any clue.  “Does your brother know?”

Andre looks back towards the station briefly, nods.  “He’s—he’s still in there.  Can’t look at her, can’t speak to her, but—Gold’s in there, he didn’t want to—Julian’s always been a noble bastard—“

And Emma wants to keep feeling for Andre, and for Julian, and for poor kind Mark, but all she can focus on is _Gold_.  “Gold is in there?” she repeats, gets right in Andre’s face.  “She told you about your brother in front of Gold?”

Andre looks at her, confused.  “Yeah—he asked for time alone, we wouldn’t give it, and then she—“

Emma drops the fries and the coffee and the water and runs.

 

* * *

 

Gold is standing right in front of Regina’s cell when Emma shoves Julian out of the way, bursts through the double doors into the bullpen and pulls Carnwennan out.  “Step away from her.  Now.”

Gold just smirks, shifts his hands slightly on the walking stick posed in front of him.  “Good afternoon, Sheriff.  Are we so familiar as to have a routine greeting?  I’m delighted.”

“Get away from her,” Emma repeats, holds back a snarl.

“Why don’t you put your new toy away?  We’ve so much to discuss and such little time.”

“We have _nothing_ to discuss—“

“Ah, but there’s the matter of a favor owed.”

Fuck.  Her jaw clenches hard, teeth clicking loud enough to get Regina’s attention.  Emma risks looking at her, sees that odd, angry-wounded glare.  As if she has the _right_.  “Fine.  Tell me what you want and then get the hell out of here.”

A slow, unsettling smile splits his face wide.  “Oh, nothing from _you_ , Sheriff.  Not anymore.”

Emma drags her gaze from Gold’s face to Regina’s, sees that wounded look again and starts to shake her head.  “No.”

“You see,” and Gold lifts one hand to his breast pocket, extracts a folded paper with a pen clipped to it, “the Queen has volunteered to pay your debt.”  He takes a step towards Emma, waves the paper back and forth slightly.  “Such a generous monarch, wouldn’t you say?  Debt forgiveness, I believe, is the term.  And a contract to guarantee it, as well.”

Stupid, _stupid_ Regina has the gall to meet Emma’s gaze steadily, unwavering—except for the slight muscle tick underneath her left eye.  If Emma didn’t know that face so fucking well, she’d miss it in the shadows and circles and exhaustion.  “I don’t agree to that,” Emma finally says, and manages to get her feet moving, resettles her grip on the sword.  Keeping it trained on Gold, she sidesteps until he’s forced to retreat to avoid the tip, until it’s her whole body between him and Regina.  “You can’t pin my debt on someone else without—“

Gold _laughs_ at her.  “Of course I can.  She _volunteered_.”

“Yeah, well, she’s crazy, so all contracts are invalid.”

It would’ve been a stretch even if Regina _were_ crazy.  Gold chuckles again.  “I’m afraid magical contracts work a bit differently than you’re used to.”

Emma shakes her head, starts to demand that he cut the crap and leave, but Regina’s voice from behind her stops her.  “Rumpelstiltskin is aware that your magic is… very raw,” she begins, and Emma remembers the exact way Regina uncoiled yesterday morning, remembers dark hearts and light dust and starts to feel sick again.  “You have no idea how to harness it.  All the power in the world is worthless without a way to use it, and teaching you proper access and control would take years.  I have the knowledge to do whatever he might want and the skill to—“ and here she hesitates.  The faintest pressure between Emma’s shoulder blades registers and disappears in the space of a second.  “To _borrow_ whatever power I might need.”

At that, Emma turns enough to look at Regina, because _borrow_ sounds a hell of a lot like _suck the life out of you_ , but Regina is giving her that look, that look, the one that makes Emma want to trust her no matter what other warning bells are screaming in her ears.  Except— _Gold,_ and an open-ended favor, and Regina’s a fucking idiot.

Emma turns back to Gold, shaking her head.  “I don’t agree to this,” she snarls, but Gold simply shrugs.

“Disagree all you like, Sheriff; she’s signed.  The deal is struck.”  That sick, sick smile gets bigger, just a little, and he bows slightly.  “A pleasure doing business, as always, Your Highness.”

It takes Emma a whole minute after the doors close behind Gold to lash out.  The sole of her boot connects with the corner of her old desk hard enough to send it scraping around in an arc with a metallic shriek.  “Have you lost your goddamn mind?” she shouts.  “An open-ended favor from _you_?  Like the fucking curse itself wasn’t enough?  What the hell do you think he’s going to do with all your power?”

Regina’s shoulders pull back, neck elongates—like something in her is rising up, gathering strength.  “Do you have any idea what he could do with _your_ power?” She gets right up against the bars, sneers, “The living embodiment of _true love_?”

Emma scoffs, turns away to resheathe the sword.  “Please—I’m a fluke—“

“You are possibly the most powerful being in this world,” Regina hisses, “and you were indebted to _Rumpelstiltskin_.”

Very, very slowly, Emma lifts her head to look at Regina, because—oh, there’s fire and fight and anger in those eyes and around that mouth and even in the bend of her fingers, and of course it would be now, right when Emma can’t handle it, but hell if it doesn’t take some of the fear out of her body.

“Tell me, what hare-brained ploy left you beholden to the Dark One?  Was it when you were running for Sheriff?  Maybe as part of your insipid campaign to prove Miss Blanchard—“

“He was going to take Alexandra!”  Emma cuts her off, steps in close to the bars because _Jesus_ , she forgot what a bitch Regina can be.  “He was going to take a newborn baby girl and do fuck-knows with her, so I made a deal and I’d do it again in a heartbeat, so _fuck off_.”

Regina holds perfectly still for a moment, then draws back slightly, condescension giving way to confusion.  “Ella’s baby?”  Emma nods, can’t hold Regina’s gaze when there’s something so… so _warm_ in those dark, dark eyes.  “You traded yourself for her?”

Emma shrugs, keeps her eyes down.  “Only thing I had.”

“Idiot,” Regina whispers, but there’s nothing remotely condescending about it.  Silence settles between them; Emma refuses to look up.  “Should he have unrestricted access to your magic, Emma… at least if it’s me, I’ll be dead before he can collect.”

She looks up at that, sees no fire but no drowning, either.  Regina just _is_.  That sick feeling settles into the pit of her stomach again.

“You have to _think_ , now,” Regina says, softening her tone.  “Your instincts are good but they won’t be enough against someone like him.  You have to be ready to play the long game.”

“My track record for the long game is pretty shitty.”

“You have to be ready.”

 _I promise_ , she remembers, and sighs.  “I know.”

The softest touch of her wrist and a shock of citrus and bright, and her knees go weak.  “Not just for Henry.”

Emma stays silent, just looks and looks and looks until she thinks she’ll go blind.  “You’re an idiot, you know that?” she finally says, and almost laughs at the startled offense that curls up Regina’s mouth.  “Those guys would’ve gone down swinging for you, and you, you couldn’t leave a single person unharmed, could you?  Their brother’s _body_?  What could you have possibly gained for his body?”

Regina won’t look at her, but the tick under her left eye returns for a few beats.  “My mother’s.  I traded his body for my mother’s.”

 _Fuck_.

 

* * *

 

The safest place for her is definitely her office.  With the door closed.  And most of the blinds lowered.  She leaves the set facing the station entrance tilted open slightly, but it’s just easier to not have to look at Regina or Julian.  If she can’t see them, they can’t exist, not in any immediate way.

It would be nice if a single day could go by without ten bombshells to complicate everything.  It would have been nice to come back to a relatively normal life in a small town where her biggest worry was making sure the Thursday night drag racers didn’t try to take over Main Street.

Emma ducks into Dave’s for lunch, huddles at the back of the shop and watches out the window until she sees Archie walk past with a white paper bag, waits three minutes before heading back.  Julian’s waiting in the vestibule, avoiding eye contact, and she just sighs.  “With me, Julian,” she mutters, and gestures him into her office, makes the mistake of looking towards the cells while she holds the door open.  Archie’s just turning back to Regina, shoulders up around his ears, but Regina is looking straight at her and it’s back to that nothing face, that no-hope, no-fight face.

She closes her door a little harder than necessary, startling Julian.  “Okay.  That money thing you were talking about with Regina.  Explain.”

He looks startled, then wary.  “It doesn’t concern you, Sheriff.”

“Does it involve the well-being of the people in this town?”  Julian shifts his weight uncomfortably.  “Talk.”

He sighs, sits in one of the visitor chairs heavily.  “You’re aware that people are picking and choosing which portions of their lives they are sticking with.”

“Yes.”

“Including employment.”

“Yes.”

“And which laws and statutes to obey.”  Emma stays silent, waits for him to continue.  “Given that none of the teachers have reported to work in a month, that the mayor has been barred from her office and that various county employees have chosen not to continue in their posts, we are looking at a shortage of tax revenue.”

He’s very still when he speaks and it sets Emma on edge.  She’s used to people using their hands, shifting around, moving their heads, but the only thing on Julian that moves is his mouth.

“I’ve been running payroll for salaried employees, regardless of if they pick up their checks or not, so technically those amounts are in to the state already, but I had nothing to work with for hourly workers so we’re short by about a third.  I can… commit fraud and run checks based on last year’s hours for these weeks, but if I make a single mistake—“

It all clicks, very quickly.  “Then we’re looking at state oversight.”

“Yes.”  He hesitates, then continues.  “In addition… there is talk among certain circles about refusing to pay property tax when the bills go out at the end of the month.  If that happens, then—there’s not enough cash in the entire county budget to make up that amount.”  Finally, he shifts, shoulders dropping.  “If that happens, then the county gets investigated.”

“Define investigated.”

“All records since incorporation reviewed, meticulously.  On-site inspections.  If they suspect unrest, which they would because coordinated refusal to pay property taxes _is_ civil disobedience, who knows what they’ll send.”

 _Fuck_.

“Who have you told so far?” she asks.

“Mitchell.  Helena—“ he sees her confusion, amends quickly, “the council.”

“The self-appointed council.”

“Yes.”

“And they say?”

Julian stays silent.

A knock on the door startles both of them; Emma sees Kathryn’s face through the blinds.  “Gimme a minute,” she says softly, and Julian opens the door for Kathryn, waits for her to enter before stepping out with a slight bow.  Emma wants to laugh, a little bit, but everything is so absolutely fucked that she’s just too tired to force the sound.

Kathryn gives her a weak smile.  “Rough day?”

Emma scoffs, gestures for her to sit.  “What brings you by again?”  At Kathryn’s startled expression, she winces.  “I was, uh, across the street this morning.  Saw you come out with Henry.”

“Ah.”  The weak smile returns very, very briefly.  “Well, actually, I’m here about Henry.”

Emma freezes.

Kathryn opens her purse, pulls out a thin sheaf of papers folded into thirds.  “Regina asked me to modify her will this morning to include a testamentary guardianship clause.”

“A _what_.”

It takes a long, long moment for Kathryn to meet her gaze, to be able to speak.  “She asked me to draft a codicil naming you as Henry’s sole guardian upon her death or disappearance.  You don’t have to sign it now, but you will when—“

Emma kicks her chair over, watches it crash into a filing cabinet with a completely unsatisfying _clunk_ , and very, very coolly tells Kathryn, “Get out.”

 

* * *

 

It’s nearly six before she can venture out to the cells.  Henry’s called her five times; Snow called six and David twice.  She didn’t pick up for any of them, sent Henry a short text saying _tons of work, be home for dinner. love._   It was the best she could do, and if that didn’t say everything about all of this… this insanity, then…

She goes out to the cells with the copy Kathryn left for her; the Tweedle guards are used to her glowering and stomping by now and they leave as soon as her door opens.  Regina’s actually lying down, for once, but her eyes are open and tracking Emma’s movements around the office.

Emma moves a lot.  First, to the line-up wall and she thinks of Graham, and Mary Margaret, and her first days in Storybrooke and what she thought would be her last and how Regina killed Graham, crushed his heart, but Emma—Emma erased Mary Margaret.  Erased.  Gave a single kiss that blew her out of existence in everyone’s minds but her own.

“What are you doing?” she finally asks, doesn’t look at Regina as she walks to the exterior wall and settles her shoulders against the bricks.  “Why are you doing this?”

“Trying to take care of him.”  Regina sits up slowly, but Emma knows better than to look at her.  “You… you did everything you could to look out for him, when you thought… I just want him to be safe, and happy.  He’ll be that with you.  And if there are difficulties because of the terms of the adoption, then having my… request on record, to go with Henry’s preference and your own—“

“What if I said no?”

Regina trembles, and nausea rises to the back of Emma’s mouth.  “You—you wouldn’t.”

She wants to fight it, to rip at Regina and tear this insanity apart until she’s a mother and a fighter again, but she just can’t.  There are a hundred thousand things she can throw at Regina but cruelty isn’t any of them.  “I wouldn’t,” she agrees, “but I hate you for doing this.”

And Regina smiles, shakes her head.  “This is what he’s wanted so badly for over a year, Emma.  And now I can give this to him, I can keep him safe and make him happy.  What makes you think your attitude towards me means anything compared to that?”

Slowly, slowly, Emma lets her knees give, slides down the wall with her t-shirt rucking up her back.  She’d do anything for the brick to scratch up her back, to give her some other pain to fixate on.  “This isn’t what he wants at all.”

“What he wants is… beyond all human capability.  This is as close as we’ll get.”  Regina smiles again, and Emma wishes for a real smile, for that mouth to widen and curve and for those eyes to scrunch at the outer corners and for just a little bit of light.  “He’ll have his real mother, and his grandparents, and a horse and a sword and a title, and he’ll get to watch all the happy endings that he believes in so strongly.  I can give that to him.”

“He wants both.”  Her throat burns from the lingering nausea and the swelling of tears, and she tries to clear it, to settle back down.  “He wants both his mothers.  You can give that to him, too.”

“If he gets both mothers, then the story doesn’t end.  No one else gets their happy ending.”

These fucking people and their fixation on fucking _endings_.  Emma wants to fight but there are too many things in the way of her words: Snow saying _you need to think about everything she’s done_ and Henry’s sweet sideways smile for _Operation Cottonmouth_ and Ruby shrugging over _yeah, here’s messed up, but_ —

“This was supposed to be your happy ending.  No one else was supposed to ever get theirs.”

Regina sighs, rests her head against the bars of the next cell.  “So long as the curse remained, yes.  You might, however, remember _breaking_ the curse.”

Emma ignores her.  “But—but you didn’t—you said it was empty.”  There’s a thread here, a single thread leading forward and spinning out into something she can take hold of, pull on.  “That’s what you said, you said he’s _everything_ , before him was _nothing_.  So—so he’s your happy ending, but you had to wait eighteen years for him.”

Regina lifts her head, face set in warning and ice, but says nothing.

“And that—that seems dumb.  A dumb curse, to wait eighteen years in limbo.  You wouldn’t cast a dumb curse.”

Regina can’t hold back the scoff.  “No, I would not.”  And then she catches herself, looks away.  “Henry… is a blessing.  A blessing I did not anticipate when I cast the curse.”

Emma’s pulling so hard on this thread, waiting waiting waiting for Regina to unravel, that she uncurls from where she’s slumped against the wall, leans forward to catch Regina’s gaze.  “So your happy ending was supposed to be that life without him.  That empty life.  That no one and nothing life.  That’s what you said, you said no one and nothing.”  Those dark, dark eyes are so sad, so sad, and she can almost see that mouth saying _please stop_ but everything’s gone blurry and wet.  “How—how the fuck is that your happy ending?  How could you have ruined so many lives just for that?”

Regina says nothing, just closes her eyes and lets her head drop against the bars again, and Emma drags her knees forward to the edge of the cell bars, pushes against the weight of the metal because she has to do this, has to, but she doesn’t want to feel it.

“What made you adopt him?”

Those sad, sad eyes fly open, and Regina shakes her head.  “Emma—“

“He’s going to ask one day.  He’s going to ask so, so many questions about you, because he _loves_ you, and do you know what not having the answers will do to him?  It’ll make him me.  And the one thing you and I have always agreed on is that he can’t ever become me.”

Regina doesn’t say anything, but Emma watches her whole small body sink under some new weight, watches her give in before she even speaks.  “A heart isn’t the only organ that can be removed by magic.”

What the fuck does that even— _Jesus Christ_.

“What?” Emma rasps, and then, “Who—“

“I did.”  Emma, through a fog, watches Regina steel herself, watches her whole small body rise up and set, watches her nails dig into her palms and her chin lift to unbreakable.  “Six months after my wedding.”

Emma slumps heavily against the bars.

“Then we were here and I was finally—“ and Regina cuts herself off.  “And I thought it would be enough, but it wasn’t.  Not like it should have been.  And then I thought that maybe, maybe a happy ending wasn’t about being happy yourself but giving someone else happiness.  That maybe—maybe if I could make someone else happy, if someone could flourish with me, could grow…  But a cursed body stays in its cursed state.  No changes.  So—even if hormone injections took and they could harvest—a surrogate from here would be impossible.  And a surrogate from outside would be too risky.  So, adoption.”

Emma tries to get words out but they sound high and wispy and weak.  “Regina—if you don’t—you don’t have to—“

“No, Miss Swan, you asked.  You wanted answers, so you’ll have them.”  Her tone is vicious, icy, but her eyes are so sad, so sad.  “It took a long time.  Longer, because Gold kept having to redo my credentials every year.”

“Credentials?” Emma echoes.

Regina sighs—one of her tricks, one of her _don’t kill the Sheriff_ tricks.  This isn’t the time but it is, it is.  “Background checks are extremely thorough, especially for prospective single parents.  My footprint in the outside world had to be completely fabricated and constantly updated.  It took quite a bit of work to become a ‘real’ person.  But then I found that agency, catering to _atypical_ parents.  Older couples, single parents, gay couples, the people who standard agencies would pass over.  They worked quickly and then they showed me Henry, just born and—“  It’s silent for a long moment, and then Regina continues.  “And that was it.  I knew it was him.”

Emma curls up again, puts her head on her knees.  “It took you eighteen years of nothingness to even think to try and be happy?” she whispers.

“Fifteen,” Regina corrects tonelessly.  “All the paperwork—it took three years.”

“That’s not the goddamn _question_ , Regina,” Emma snaps, and looks up at her to glare but she is so sad, so tired, so deeply loving of their son—

“How long did it take you, to finally try?” Regina questions softly.  “How long did it take for you to even consider staying still?”

It’s supposed to an attack—the way her body leans forward, the angle of her shoulders, the way her mouth forms the words, it’s supposed to be an attack—but the look on her face and the weariness in her voice make it something else entirely.  Everything with Regina is always something else, and this—

They both know the answer, anyway.  The apartment in Boston was a ten-month sublet and there hadn’t ever been a plan for what to do come December.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and pulls herself to her feet, says it again.  “I’m sorry.”

Regina sighs heavily, still playing at mayoral indifference.  It’s not the time but it is.  “For what?”

“That—that you were ever in a position where—where doing that to yourself was your best option.”

All the color—little as there is—drains from Regina’s face.  “Get out.”

“Regina—“

“ _Leave_.”

“I’m not—“

“Get _out_!” and she’s trembling again, and Emma hates that, hates it so much.

“I”m sorry,” she whispers again, and flees.

 

* * *

 

Dinner is awkward and silent.  Snow and David keep asking what she was doing all day, getting more creative each time; Emma makes vague allusions to paperwork or shovels food in her mouth.  Henry isn’t talking much at all, pushing mashed potatoes around his plate and not eating more than a few bites.  It takes him fifteen minutes to ask to be excused, and he retreats upstairs silently.  She hears her bedroom door click softly and looks to David, who holds his hands palm up, then stands to clear the table.

She does the dishes alone while Snow packs the leftovers into different Tupperware containers, neither of them speaking when Snow hands off different pots to her.  Snow keeps looking up the stairs after Henry and then over to Emma, chewing her lip, and that sets something twisting and uncomfortable in Emma’s stomach, but before she can work up the nerve to ask outright _did something happen_ , Snow hands her the last pan wordlessly and retreats to the bedroom.

Mostly, she wants to hit things until she can’t feel her hands.  The dried grease on the bottom of the pan doesn’t extract nearly enough aggression.

When she finally heads upstairs, she knocks three time and waits for a “Yeah,” before opening the door.  Even though it’s barely past eight, Henry’s already in his pjs and lying on the bed, on his side with his back to the door.  He flips through pages of a book, moving too quickly to actually be processing words.

“Hey, kid,” she says softly, and he looks over his shoulder at her.

“Hey.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t hang out today.”

“S’okay.”

“Yeah?”  She comes and sits on her side of the bed, tucks her legs under her so her feet dangle off the edge.  “It doesn’t have to be, you know.”  He frowns in confusion, so she clarifies.  “You seem a little upset.”

He looks at her for a long moment, then closes the book and rolls onto his back.  “Is it okay if I go to church tomorrow?”

Of all the things she thought she’d hear, church was absolutely nowhere on the list.  “You go to church?”

It comes out a little more aghast than she means; Henry nods shyly.  “Mom and I used to go and light a candle for Welo—her dad—after Mass.  Then she got mad at Father Gabe after this one sermon and said she wasn’t gonna go anymore, but she always said she’d take me if I wanted to go.”

Emma wants to take time to think about Regina in a church and maybe laugh until she cries until she falls apart, but Henry is here and now.  So she leans over and unzips her boots, toes them off and settles fully on the bed, legs crossed.  “So you wanna go tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to go with you?”

Henry shrugs, looks down and picks at the edge of the blanket.  “You don’t have to.  You don’t really seem like—“ and he cuts himself off, eyes widening.

She smirks a little, pokes his side.  “Like a church girl?”

He grins, then, and shakes his head.  “Not really.”

And she laughs, reaches out and messes up the hair covering his forehead, because he’s smiled, he’s smiling, and that’s something.  “Got that right.  But I’ll take you, if you want.”  He bats at her hand and scrunches his face up in annoyance, but nods when she relents.  “What made you think of church now?”

It’s a minute or so before he speaks, eyes back on the blanket edge.  “I talked to Grams today,” he finally says, and Emma holds her breath, waits.  “About why Mom’s so sad.”

All the air rushes out of her lungs, because—this boy, her boy, how is he real?  “What made you ask Grams?”

He shrugs, picks at the edge of the blanket and comes away with a short red thread.  “You weren’t picking up, and she’s known Mom the longest.”

Emma wants to say something about that—she wants to say so many things—but Henry’s holding his mouth in that particular _there’s more_ way, so she stays quiet.

“She said—she said the reason you didn’t come back that first night, that it was because Mom killed someone.”

Her whole body seizes up in a flash of outrage, but Henry’s still not looking at her and— _fuck._ “That’s… partially true,” she starts, and reaches out to touch his arm so that he looks at her.  His eyes are—God, they’re just like Regina’s: so sad, so sad.  “We killed someone,” she says, and pulls her hand back so that she’s not touching him anymore, so that he doesn’t get this under his skin.  “Your mom and me.  We killed someone.”

Henry stares, and stares, and stares.  “Grams said it was Mom’s mom.”

And Emma nods, doesn’t look away from him—knows better than to close her eyes, to let herself see it again.  “Yes.  Cora.”

“She never talked about her.  She’d tell me things about Welo but never her mom.”  He finally looks away, chews at his upper lip the way she does when she thinks hard.  “Why did you kill her?”

Of course he asks, because he’s hers and he’s Regina’s and he would ask.  “Because—because she was really, really bad, Henry.  Really evil, and really powerful.  And she wanted to hurt a lot of people, and she would have—“ and Emma thinks of the whole village of zombies and she thinks of Regina shaking on the floor of the dream-diner and she thinks of that soft, soft voice saying _she could have been me_ and she closes her eyes and that’s a mistake.  Big, big mistake.

She’s got to pull herself together.  She’s got to pull herself together because Henry needs her and Regina’s in jail.

“Is that what happens to evil people?  You kill them?”

Emma doesn’t know if she should pull him close and hug him and cover his ears so he can just stay this sweet.  She doesn’t know how to have this conversation, hates that she has to have it at all.  “No, no way, kid.  That’s not—no matter what, you do whatever you can to not kill.”  She takes a deep breath, reaches for his hand and breathes out slowly when he lets her take it.  “But—but sometimes—“ and she sighs, caves a little.  “She would have hurt your mom, and she would’ve used you to do it,” she says softly.  “And neither of us were going to let her ever get close to you.”

“Why would she have hurt Mom?  Didn’t she love her?”

 _Henry._   How does she explain abuse to her son who’s never had to see it, hear it, feel it, her son who’s so beautiful in his ignorance?

“No,” she finally says.  “No.  Cora didn’t love your mom.”

“Did Mom love her?”

She nods, fights to keep her eyes open, to think of anything but red and weeping eyes, to think of anything but red and graying flesh.

“So how—how could Mom kill her, if she loved her?” 

There are so many things that Regina should have told him—so many questions he’s going to have.  “That’s part of why she’s so sad,” she tells him—softly, whispering words she has no right to say.  “But—“  She stops, unable to figure out the words that could fill in these hollow shapes in her mind, the ones showing Regina trying on smile after smile to cover up endless and unrelenting fear.  “But if it comes down to it, Henry, your mom is always going to choose you.  Over anybody else.  Even herself.  She’ll always choose you.”

Henry looks away, but keeps her hand in his.  “Emma?” he whispers, in the smallest voice she’s ever heard.

“I’m here.”

“Am I gonna have to kill Mom?”

She actually gasps, squeezes his hand hard.  “Whoa—Henry, no, no, you’re never gonna— _no_.  That’s never gonna happen.  Never.  What—why would you think that?”

“Because—because she did a lot of bad things, she hurt a lot of people.  She was evil, Emma, and—and I heard Grams and Mr. French talking and they said that Mom’s used up all her chances, and—and if she had to kill _her_ mom, then—“ 

He’s crying now, whole body shaking with sobs, and Emma unfolds herself and lays down next to him, pulls him close and lets him cry.  “I want you to listen very carefully, Henry, okay?” she whispers, and waits for him to nod through his tears.  “I will never, _ever_ , let anyone use either of you against each other.  Not _ever_.  Okay?  No one’s gonna make you hurt her, and no one’s gonna make her hurt you.  I promise you.”

“Is she gonna die?”

Emma hesitates.

“I don’t want her to die.  I want her to come home.  I know she did bad things but—but she doesn’t want to do them anymore, Emma, I _know_ she doesn’t, and that matters, right?”

She hugs him close and tries not to shake.  “Yeah, Henry.  That matters a lot.”

 

* * *

 

“Tell me again about his first day of school.”

Regina starts, looks up at Emma with wide, wet eyes.  They just look at each other for three breaths, three slow breaths that don’t make this cloudy hazy feeling go anywhere but deeper in.  The light from the diner window falls directly on Regina’s face and hands, and for a moment she doesn’t look so worn out, so defeated.  She looks like the first night, when she was standing out in front of her house, all fear and trembling and warmth and love.  

She gives in.  “He got up long before I did because he was so excited.  I’d set out jeans for him and a white polo to go with the uniform sweater but he—he was so determined, he put on his best slacks and his dress shoes and an Oxford buttoned all the way up and oh, God, he even put on his clip on tie, and the school sweater over it—“

Emma’s throat is tight and Regina’s voice is cracking and she can’t look anywhere but right at her, right at all the love in those dark, dark eyes.

“He looked like a tiny little professor, he looked—when I finally came downstairs, he was just sitting at the table swinging his feet and grinning and he was so, so happy, his clothes still had creases because of course he couldn’t iron them but his smile—oh, Emma, if you’d seen his face, if you’d seen his smile, it was so big—“

Regina cries and Emma can’t stop herself from reaching out, threading her fingers with Regina’s, squeezing tight.  “Tell me about dropping him off.”

She already knows how it goes but she wants to listen to the way Regina’s voice rises and falls and breaks over walking Henry to the steps of the school where all the other children were lined up and watching him walk into the building without her.  She already knows exactly how long Regina allowed herself to lose her shit—a whole thirty seconds, thirty seconds of falling apart in the middle of the street—before she convinced herself that he would be okay.  He would be okay, he would always be okay because—

“Because he was perfect, he was so bright, so full of light, and when I came to pick him up in the afternoon he ran to me, ran right into my arms.  And he told me that everyone was so nice and he got his own cubby and that he’d get to paint every Wednesday and he couldn’t wait to go again tomorrow because he loved school, but—“ and Regina closes her eyes, tries to hold it in.  “But—“

“But don’t worry, not as much as he loved you,” Emma fills in, because Regina can’t and Emma already knows how it goes.

Regina cries and Emma holds on, rests her forehead against their joined hands and fights her own tears tooth and nail.

“I didn’t—I didn’t mean to upset you, before,” she finally whispers, and lifts her head just enough to look up.  The look in Regina’s eyes—she loses all her breath.  “It takes—it takes a special kind of strength to continue.  I admire strength.”

Regina suppresses the sobs long enough to choke out, “Please—please don’t tell him that—I don’t ever want him to think he was a second choice or a backup plan or—“

Emma squeezes her hands and can’t keep her tears in any longer.  “I won’t tell _anyone_ that part.”

Regina smiles at her, eyes wet and warm and with so much—with so much—

Emma puts her head down and cries.


	4. Apate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _the personification of deceit._

> Then my soul appeared.  It said 
> 
> just as no one can see me, no one 
> 
> can see the blood.
> 
>  
> 
> Also: no one can see the harp.
> 
>  
> 
> Then it said 
> 
> I can save you.  Meaning 
> 
> _this is a test._

 

_Fugue_ , Louise Gluck

 

* * *

 

Henry’s up before the alarm goes off, scrabbling around for his towel and clean underclothes for a good three minutes before he heads down the stairs, almost tripping twice and hitting that fourth step with enough weight to wake the entire building.  She hears him hiss “Oops” before continuing anyway, and when she smiles her cheeks feel tight and over-dry, feel like they’re cracking after a day at the beach.  She reaches up to touch her face, feels the strange smooth-stiffness on both cheeks, driest just beneath her eyes.  

Crying in her sleep.  She hasn’t done that in years.  She’ll need to wash her face before Henry can get a look at her.

It takes the two of them a good forty minutes to get ready, and Emma can’t help but smile when the kid comes down the stairs while she’s putting her boots on, dressed in a button-front with his hair carefully combed.  “Lookin’ sharp,” she teases, and he scrunches up his face in distaste but tugs at the collar of his shirt.

Of course he hits the fourth step again, and Emma hears shuffling from the bedroom, reaches for her coat quickly.  Henry doesn’t get the hint, takes his time tying his shoes and keeps his head down when Snow shuffles out into the room, greeting them both with a smile.  “Good morning.  Where are you two off to so early?”

Kid didn’t get the hint to hurry up with his shoes, but he picks up on Emma’s body language of _say nothing_ like they’ve been pulling cons for years.  “Henry,” she says softly, and waits until he looks directly at her.  “You okay with walking by yourself?”

He doesn’t look over at Snow before nodding.  “Yeah.  I’ll text you after?”

Emma nods, wants to push his hair away from his forehead but knows he’ll make that face again, wants to do _something_ to just—and then remembers that she can.  She _can_.  So she leans forward, kisses the very top of his head and then pushes lightly at the middle of his back, guiding him towards the door.

She knows Snow isn’t moving through all the motions of seeing Henry off, knows that just behind her is a wall of anxiety and tension and even the idea of it makes that old, good-sharp rage slice up between her lungs, curl around her sternum.  Part of her says _walk away, walk the fuck away before you ruin this_ and part of her says _but no one fucks with your son_.

She turns around slowly, hooks her thumbs into her front pockets and takes two steps forward, keeps her chin down and her eyes down but her anger is up, up, up.  “Who,” she starts, softly, “the _hell_ do you think you are?”

Snow takes a small step back, startled.  Good.  _Good_.  “I—Emma, what—“

“You thought you had the right to talk to him about what happened with Cora?  About what we had to do?” she hisses.

It takes three seconds, three solid thumps of her heart, before the surprise on Snow’s face turns to resentment.  “I am his _grandmother_ ,” she retorts, and the sharpness in Emma’s chest flares up brightly.  “I’m the one who had to explain to him that Regina was arrested while his _mother_ conveniently disappeared!  I’m the one—“

“You don’t get to make up for abandoning me by co-opting my responsibilities to my son!”

The only sound is Snow’s sharp inhale.  She wears a wounded half-pout that pokes at the pressure between Emma’s lungs.  It would be better for Snow if she could keep her face blank, or if Emma could close her eyes.  It would be better but it can’t be.

“You had _no_ right to tell him about Cora,” Emma continues, taking one more step forward.  “That was for me and Regina to do.  That was something for _us_ to figure out with him, not you.”

Snow shakes her head, takes a step backward and bumps against the kitchen island.  “Emma—I—you can’t just leave things to fester with him, he’s too smart, he knew—“

There are ways for this fight to go but _justification_ isn’t one of them.  “People I’m willing to take parenting advice from?  Not you.”

“Emma!”

David’s standing in the doorway of the bedroom and Emma can’t help but roll her eyes, because of course this would escalate.  And Snow’s tearing up and _fuck_.  She didn’t want tears.  She just wanted a quick, simple, all-out fight—get all the rage out, get all the bitterness _out_.  But this bullshit—niceties don’t get anybody anywhere.  “Look, I didn’t—“ and she stops.  She doesn’t owe anybody anything here.  Not really.  “Do you think his mom being in jail is easy for him?  You think that maybe he might not be able to _handle_ the idea of his moms teaming up to kill his grandmother right now, when the only support he’s ever known is locked in a six by six cell?”

“Emma,” David says again, but in that soft white-wool voice.  “She didn’t mean—“

Emma wants to bang her head against a wall.  “I don’t give a damn what she meant or didn’t mean.  I give a damn about the fact that I had to spend last night telling Henry that _of course_ he won’t have to kill his own mother because she used to be bad!”

Snow gasps, and David physically recoils, but Emma knows they still don’t get it because Snow comes towards her with her arms out.  “Emma—I never thought—“

“No,” she snaps, and crosses her arms over her chest to ward off contact.  “You’re right.  You didn’t think.”

Snow’s eyes are watery.  “Emma, I really didn’t mean—“

She tries to keep it in, she _really_ does, but she thinks of the way Henry’s whole body shook from sobs and that pressure between her lungs slices upwards, quick and sharp.  “I don’t _care_ what you meant, you fucked up!”

The fact that Snow’s response is confusion, that David’s brows furrow, that neither of them even _understands_ what the problem is—Emma’s feet _burn_ , they itch, that pressure between her lungs starts pressing up against her heart, starts whispering in her ear.  _Tell them about Geppetto_ , it says, _tell them how they got played_.  _Let them feel this too_.

She takes a deep breath, then another, and another.  The sharpness uncurls, just a little, just enough to back off and make her capable of kindness again.  Neither of her parents says anything, which says everything even though it shouldn’t.  “Fine.  Fine.  Let’s go with your interpretation of _right_ and _wrong_.  Telling him was _right_.  So his pain and his fear, that’s _right_ too, huh?”

“Of course not,” Snow insists, “but—“

“But _nothing_.  If the first thing was right, everything that follows should be, too, right?”  She stares at Snow, who just looks lost, who just wrings her hands helplessly.  “It was _wrong_ , Snow, and what’s worse is it was _cruel_.  And then there’s the part where you lied to him and said it was only Regina, and that’s just—I don’t even know what that is, actually.  What _is_ that?”

Snow opens her mouth, closes it, tries again.  “I—he already knows what she’s capable of—I didn’t want him to be afraid of you—“

It’s a reflex, really, kicking out; the sole of her boot slams into the near leg of one of the stools and sends it skittering across the floor.  Snow jumps, but David’s shoulders slump, like he saw it coming but kept wishing it wouldn’t.  

Emma curls her fists tight, keeps breathing through her mouth to keep herself still.  _Stay still_.  “How did I make a living before I came here?”

Snow and David look at each other in confusion, but Snow answers.  “You were a bail bonds—“

“What does that mean, Snow.”

It’s silent, mostly.  Both Snow and David try to start sentences but quit before anything comes out.

“It means that sometimes, I gave out money to fucked up people to get them back on the streets.  It means that sometimes, I gave out money to good people to get them out of jail for a little while, except most of the time—most of the time, they lost their case anyway.  It means I banked my day to day life on other people’s fuck-ups.  It means I’ve taken family homes, retirement savings, college funds—I’ve taken people’s last dimes and all their hope.  That’s how I made bank.  That’s how I paid the rent.  That’s how I fed myself, clothed myself, kept my stolen car.  Do you get what I’m saying?”  

Silence again.  

“You all want to mourn your time warp without your happy endings, and that’s cool, I respect that, but you need to put things in perspective.  Because here’s the thing: the happy endings I’ve taken can’t be restored with a kiss.  Time doesn’t stand still for those people.  They lost everything and had to keep on living the same life.  So if Regina’s so terrible and cruel, then I’m worse.”

“She’s killed—“

“We’ve _all_ killed, David,” she snaps, finally looking up with all that good-sharp rage high in her throat and deep in her eyes.  “And some of us have even cut up the bodies and burned them up, too.  You’ve killed and I’ve killed.  So cut the shit with pinning that all on Regina like somehow your murders weigh less than hers.  _I_ shot Cora three times and then _I_ cut her body up into tiny little pieces and _you_ helped me wrap those pieces up in a tarp and then burn them all up so don’t you fucking stand there and absolve me of what I’ve done just to keep your fake world order in place.”

She can’t breathe because it’s taking all her air to _stay still_ , but God, it feels good to be this again—this cold, this incisive, this _true_.  

Snow shakes her head, steps closer to David.  It’s a defensive repositioning and it’s—if Emma had any illusions about this resolving well, they’re gone now.  “Cora had to be stopped.  You were doing the right thing—”

The _right_ thing.  All that good-sharp rage deflates in one startling withdrawal; she’s left with just this solid weight of sadness.  “This,” she murmurs.  “This is exactly what I don’t want him to hear.  I don’t want him to hear that killing is right.  I don’t want him to hear that doing bad things is _justifiable_ because that’s not what—“ she hesitates and the words rise up through all the sadness.  She says them slowly, lets them settle into the empty space where the rage used to be.  “That’s not how he was raised.  That’s not what Regina taught him.”

The fastest flash of understanding passes over David’s face so quickly that if she hadn’t been searching for his reaction, she would have missed it.  It’s impossible to miss Snow’s scoff, but David—David nods at her.  David knows what she’s talking about.

“Of all the people who _would_ teach him that,” Snow starts, “Regina should be at the top of the list—”

“Stop.”  Emma says it quietly, looks right at Snow.  “Stop.  We—I can’t look past this right now, but I might be able to next week or next month or whenever, but I can’t—you need to stop believing that she hasn’t been a good mother.  She has done right by our son for years and years and years.  She loves him so much that it hurts to even think about—“

She crumples.  It’s abrupt but unsurprising because every time she thinks about Regina and their son, every time she thinks about how he used to write all of his _E_ s backwards and how Regina is the only one who treasures every misspelled _Henry_ ever written, her heart gets so full that it aches like she will break at any moment.  She crumples and David surges forward but she can’t—that’s not okay.  Not yet.

“I don’t like to be touched,” Emma says, and she doesn’t mean for those words to hurt them but they do and she can _see_ it—

“Sure,” David says, and lowers his arms and his chin and his eyes.  “Sorry.”

There are so many different types of grief in Snow’s eyes; Emma doesn’t know what to do with any of them.  “So what—what do you need, Emma?” she finally asks, voice wavering.  “How do we—what do you need?”

_The last twenty eight years_ and _nothing, you’re too late for me_ are the first things that come to mind and she drags them back from where they’re tripping towards the tip of her tongue, buries them underneath all this Regina-Henry-sadness.  “I need to know that I can trust you around Henry.  That you won’t pull things like this, things that make his relationship with Regina harder, things that make her _bad_ and me _good_ because none of that is real.”  Snow frowns, starts to say something, but Emma keeps going, has to keep going, has to say it.  “He’s ours, he loves both of us, you can’t—you can’t mess with that.  I need to know you won’t mess with that.”

David nods first even though they all know not a single word was towards him.  He already knew.  He had to have known.  _Take the horses to the tree line_ —he knew.

Snow, though, she looks as hard and wary as when—God, as when Cora asked _Who is Henry_?  But finally, finally she nods; it’s curt, but it’s a nod.  “Of course.”

She doesn’t mean it.  There’s too much history for her to mean it.  Emma’s not dumb, not when it comes to people and motivations and grudges.  She wonders, briefly, which absence would be more offensive to Henry: a dead mother or living grandparents.

She’s just so tired.  “Okay,” she lies.  “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

The disappointment in Regina’s eyes when the double doors click shut behind Andre and Julian hits just as hard as her right hook.  “Henry’s sleeping in?  Good, he looked tired—“

“He went to church.”  Emma drops into one of the folding chairs, passes the breakfast bag through.  

Regina doesn’t move to pick it up, eyes narrow and wary.  “What happened?  Is he all right?”

“He’s sad and scared and confused, Regina.  His mom is looking forward to her own execution, of course he’s not all right.”  Her eyes are just so heavy; they drift closed under the weight of all the things she wanted to say to Snow, all the things she can’t ever say to Snow.  “He had a talk with my mother yesterday.”

The way Regina’s spine stiffens and her mouth curls into a sneer and her eyes start to burn, dark and dangerous, it all scares the shit out of Emma.  She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so much anything for anybody—but then again, that’s Regina, all the way through.  More emotion than any one person should have to handle.  “What did she do to my son?” Regina hisses.

And because Emma is an idiot, is a fool with foolish thoughts, she wonders what it would have been like, if anyone in this whole fucking world had loved her enough to hate for her like this.  Who she might have been if anyone had felt as much for her as Regina is capable of feeling.

Stupid, stupid Emma.  She pinches her eyes shut, shakes her head to chase away her foolishness.  “He asked her why you’re so sad.”  She waits for it to sink in, waits for Regina’s rage to recede just enough for guilt to rush in.  “She told him that you killed your own mother.”

Anger rises up in Regina’s body; anger stretches out her fingers and pulls her shoulders back and hardens her jaw and it’s a frightening and desperately beautiful thing to see.  Emma wishes it wasn’t.  “Three nights with my son and she’s already—“

“I told her to fuck off.”

Even now, with the whole world in ruins around them, there is something absurdly satisfying about shocking Regina into silence.  The longer she stays silent, though, the less satisfying it gets, until finally Emma shifts her weight in the chair and ducks her head to get out of the way of Regina’s disbelieving stare.  

“I mean, kind of,” she tacks on, but Regina’s eyes don’t change.  “It was a clusterfuck.  But I told her she was wrong to tell him anything without talking to us first, and she was wrong to lie, and that I won’t let them do anything that disrespects your position as his mother.  Ever.”

“What did you tell him?”

Her voice is raspy, low and rough, and the words take so long to come out that Emma can’t help but think of the early nights in the diner, of the Daniel night.  “I told him that we killed your mother.  Both of us.  And that it made you very sad to have to do it, but that Cora would have hurt him to hurt you and we would do anything to protect him.  You would do anything to protect him.  So we killed her.  And killing is wrong.”  

She’d be so much more comfortable if Regina could give her anger again, but instead Regina is giving her that wide-eyed everything look, the one with gratitude at the outer corner of the eyes.  “You told him all of that?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Emma scoffs, because Regina’s an idiot.  

“You didn’t.  You had a ready lie that would have made things—easier.”

“Easier for who?” she fires back.

Regina exhales slowly, and that stiff, rage-spiked spine relaxes, lets her shoulders loosen.  She’s nodding to herself, like getting confirmation of something, and Emma waits.  Waits and prays that Regina doesn’t give a mandate like _keep your mother away from our son_ because—because Emma can’t make that choice, even if it’s an absurdly easy betrayal to choose.  

“Henry—he has an incredible capacity for anger, Emma. And not like yours or mine, where we—where it's a weapon, it's an attack, it’s there the moment we need it, fully formed and ready. He... grows it, like a seed.  It takes months and years but it grows.  And it only ever comes from one thing, it always comes from betrayal. His anger is only ever from betrayal and—he's a good boy, you see that, right?”

It’s a stupid question and Regina asks it in that throaty, throttled voice because she knows.  She knows that sometimes Henry is a brat and sometimes he’s mean but—God, Emma could see how good he is even when she could only see him from her car.  

“He's a good boy because anger isn't a default for him, not like it is for you or me, but if you betray him—he can forgive anything quickly, selfishness and stupidity and fear, but not lies.  Don’t lie to him, not ever.  Say it’s something you’re not ready to talk about, or that you don’t know how to talk about it yet, or whatever the truth is, but don’t—don’t lie to him, don’t give him something to grow against you.”

Emma holds her breath because it hurts to inhale when Regina cracks like this. 

"Archie has gotten very good at helping him disperse that anger, when it comes—"

All the resentment comes screaming up like bile in her throat, because—of all the people to deal with betrayed anger, _Archie_ , and—and because Emma had made the mistake of not believing Henry about the curse, but Regina had actively _lied,_ over and over again, how can she sit here and say _don’t lie_ like it’s tried-and-true advice—

It's all over her face, apparently; Regina sighs. "The first lie was about his adoption," she says softly. “It was the only lie for a long time.  And when that lie was revealed—he just—he wasn't my baby anymore. His anger—he wasn't my baby anymore."

Emma wants the missing words, wants whatever chaos Regina's suppressing.

“The other lies came easy, after that."

Then she can hear them all, all the missing words. About fear and desperation and blindness and thinking _if only he can stay this small_ —

“Do you regret it?” she whispers, and waits until Regina looks at her, looks at her with that everything look. “Any of it?”

Regina hesitates.  “I could,” she says faintly, and those dark, dark eyes go unfocused for a moment.  “But everything led to Henry.  Regret—I wouldn’t undo anything.”

Emma gets that.  Oh, God, she gets that.  “But—but you feel—“

Lingering silence, until Regina finally says, “Unable to return to that way of life.” After a moment, she corrects herself.  “ _Unwilling_ to return to that way of life.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes longer, and then Emma nudges the breakfast bag with her foot, and Regina leans forward to take it.  “I would take back Kathryn,” she adds in a murmur, and sets her fancy coffee on the floor.  “That was—“ and she breaks off, sighs. “I would take that back.”

It’s enough.  Even that much—it’s enough.

 

* * *

 

Henry texts at ten to say that he’s going to Archie’s, and Regina lays back on the cot and stares at the ceiling in silence.  He texts again at noon to say Archie’s taking him for lunch and they’re going to talk more afterwards, and Emma chucks her phone onto the couch against the wall and lets all the air rush out of her lungs.  “I should’ve talked with him more.  About what we did.  What it means.”

“You did what you could.”

“Apparently it wasn’t enough.”

Regina sighs, turns her head toward the back wall of the cell.  “Get used to it.”

The hollowness in Regina’s voice almost doesn’t register, what with the way her words get muffled by misdirection and brick.  Almost, but does, and Emma stills, feels cold and confused.  “Regina?”

She can just barely see those thick, dark lashes moving, three blinks and a long moment closed, but there’s no movement at Regina’s jaw, no words she’s planning on offering.

“Regina—he’s gonna come see you, he’s just—he’s getting his bearings, it’s—see, I knew I should’ve made it clearer—“

“Let it go, Emma,” Regina says softly, and Emma wants to fight that, wants to pick a fight because Regina is a good mom and good moms don’t let things go.  

Before she gets a chance to do anything, Julian steps through the doors and clears his throat deferentially.  “Gold’s here again,” he tells them, looking only at Emma.

And then that fucker himself pushes Julian aside with his cane, hobbles into the bullpen with a smile.  “Such devoted servants, Regina, I must say I’m—“

“Shut up,” Emma snaps, and reaches up for Carnwennan before realizing it isn’t strapped to her back.  Her gun isn’t at her hip, it’s locked in the case in her desk.  _Fuck_.  “No visitors.  Julian, get him—“

Gold switches his cane to the other hand, taps the handle against Julian’s chest without turning.  “I think we can make an exception for me, can’t we?”

The florescent light by the door keeps flickering so she can’t be sure, but she thinks the handle of Gold’s cane shimmers blue for just a moment.  Julian steps back into the vestibule without resistance, closes the door firmly behind him.

Emma really, really wants her sword.  Swords, plural.  Especially the one with _fuck you, magic_ written all over it.  “Leave, Gold.  I mean it.”

“Don’t doubt that you do,” he lilts, and takes three arhythmic steps forward.  “My business isn’t with you, Savior.”  And then he tilts his head, smiles widely.  “How is the saving business going, by the way?  Struggling a bit with this particular operation, are we?”

Yeah, she _really_ wants that damn sword.

“Emma,” Regina sighs, and it doesn’t escape Emma that this whole thing is a clear replay of yesterday, except this time they’re double fucked instead of just plain fucked.  “Let him just… do whatever it is he came to do, and then he’ll leave.”

“Obey your sovereign, dearie,” Gold mocks, and she can’t help the way her mouth twists into a snarl.

“ _Enough_ ,” Regina hisses, voice sounding closer than a moment ago.  “Your business is with me, Rumpel, so get on with it.”

His gaze narrows and shifts from Emma’s face to Regina’s; Emma can see the moment he decides to shift gears, watches him carefully step around the corner of a desk to walk towards the outer wall.  _Buying time_ , she realizes; he’s regrouping.  “But haven’t you guessed yet?” Gold finally asks, pausing by the couch where Emma’s phone still sits.  

_Shit_.  She steps forward, but Regina reaches through the bars and grabs at her, snags a finger around one of her belt loops and yanks her back.  By the time Gold turns, Regina’s already retreated to the far corner of the cell, and Emma’s left standing with all her weight pressing forward and every muscle in her body tensed.  “You know I tired of your games years ago.  Speak plainly.”

“Years ago?” he echoes, and smirks.  “So the game you played for the Savior’s pretty little swords, that was what, exactly?”

For just a moment, Regina’s sneer seems directed straight at Emma, but when Emma looks properly, it’s clear that it’s all for Gold.  “A game of my own,” Regina answers.  “The _point_ , Rumpel.”

He smiles again, returns his gaze to Emma and limps forward two steps, stops at the very end of Regina’s cell.  “Payment, your Majesty.”

Emma feels her stomach drop, and from the way Regina’s clutching at the cuffs of the henley, the feeling seems mutual.  “Very well,” Regina finally says, and lifts her chin.  “What is it you want?”

He’s still looking at Emma, like he’s waiting for her to catch on to something, and the weight of his stare makes her skin crawl, makes her take a half-step back—and _damn it_ , as soon as she moves she sees triumph in his eyes.  “A small thing, Highness, a trifle.”

It’s so clear that Gold is enjoying the anxiety they’re both wearing like a shared second skin, that he’s toying with Regina, and there’s shit all Emma can do about it without playing right into his hands.  She looks to Regina, who glances back with just as much defeat in her eyes, and they wait in silence.

Eventually, Gold turns his body to face Regina, his smirk barely diminished.  “You will find a way for me to cross the town line as I please, without negative consequence to my identity.”

_Like hell_ , Emma opens her mouth to snap, but Regina’s fingers splay out in warning.  Gold doesn’t miss it, but he doesn’t look away from Regina, doesn’t stop smiling that eerie, self-satisfied smile.  “And if I refuse?” Regina asks quietly.  “Or if I fail?”

“Those are not options in this deal.”

“Failure is always an option.”

Something passes between the two of them, something Emma can’t detangle.  “And it has always cost you greatly,” Gold murmurs, sibilant and smug.

From the way Regina’s fingers curl in, the way her lips part and pale, Emma knows she’s missed something, some crucial piece of information.  But this—this is something she can’t interrupt; she doesn’t know how to play these war games.  “I’ll need materials.”

Three words and Regina’s voice like breaking glass and Emma wants to throw punches until everything gets better.  Gold takes two steps back as if he can sense the violence bubbling up to the surface, but nods once.  “Everything you could need came with us.  You have only to look.”  Regina’s mouth twists, and Gold’s smile flashes bright.  “So glad we could come to an agreement.”

They watch him limp out in silence, and when Emma turns back to Regina, she finds her sitting hunched over on the cot with her head in her hands.  “Regina?” she whispers, and tightens her fingers around one of the bars.

“I need to think,” Regina mumbles, and starts to massage her temples.  “I need—I need to think.”

“Okay.”  Emma moves back to the chair, pulls it up close.  “Okay, so, let’s think, what _was_ all of that, and what materials, and—“

“No,” Regina says, but doesn’t look up.  “You can’t help with this one.”

It actually startles her, being shut out, being shut out _now_.  “What?  No, to hell with that, I can—“

“ _No_ ,” Regina says again, stronger, and her fingers are digging into her temples, nails leaving half-moons in her skin.  In the same voice that made Emma want to shred that list of charges, in the same voice that fucks her up inside, Regina adds, “Please, Emma.  I need to think.”

_Trust me_ , those hands are saying.  _Trust me_ , those slumped shoulders are begging.  But Regina can’t even look her in the eye, won’t even give her that much.

She stands up abruptly and shoves the chair back into her old desk, stomps over to the couch and grabs her phone.  “So I’ll tell our kid you needed to _think_ when he asks to see you?” she snaps, and immediately regrets it.

Regina doesn’t flinch, though, not visibly.  “He won’t ask,” she says quietly.

Emma slams her office door behind her.

 

* * *

 

Henry comes into the diner dragging Archie behind him.  Emma’s not remotely prepared for that—doubled back to avoid Marco, earlier—but she doesn’t really get a choice when Henry pulls Archie to stand right next to the table.  “I borrowed ten dollars from Archie.  Can you pay him back?”

Emma glares at Henry, because they really need to have a talk about entitlement and appropriating other people’s money.  “The hell you need ten dollars for?  And why didn’t you just ask me before?”

“No time.  Do you have a lighter?”

She’s just managed to get her folded-up change out of her front pocket and stops, stares Henry down.  “Did you borrow ten dollars to buy cigarettes or anything else that may be rolled, lit and inhaled?”

His nose crinkles up in confusion and distaste.  “Ew.  No.”

She finally looks at Archie, points at him and narrows her eyes.  “Did you buy any such substances for him?”

Archie, bright blue eyes wide and apologetic, shakes his head.  “No, Sheriff, I would never.”

“Emma,” Henry interrupts.  “Do you or do you not have a lighter?”

She hands Archie a ten dollar bill and studies Henry’s face.  He’s up to something but nothing about his body says _bad_.  “Yeah, I’ve got a few confiscated ones at the station.”

He smiles at her, slips into the seat across from her.  There are two odd _clink-thumps_ as he slides across to sit up against the window.  “Cool.  Let’s get Mom something with mashed potatoes.”

And even though he’s up to something, her son is full up with love again, so Emma looks up at Archie and puts a smile on her face.  “Pull up a chair,” she offers, and when he hesitates, nods encouragingly.  This Henry isn’t the one she held last night, isn’t the one she kissed goodbye this morning; whatever else he’s responsible for, Archie’s got a hand in this, too.

“Loaded mashed potatoes!  Mom likes bacon, right?”

 

* * *

 

When they get back to the station with Ruby and a styrofoam clamshell with meatloaf and loaded mashed potatoes, Regina’s sitting cross-legged on the cot and massaging her wrists, with the Tweedles sitting on the chairs in front of the cell tossing a paper ball between them.  Emma coughs into her hand and they immediately get up and head for the door, Left giving Henry a short nod as he passes.  “Visitors,” Emma calls, but Regina’s already looking at Henry like the sun’s rising at midnight.

He’s a good kid.  He’s a good, good kid, goes right up to the bars and waits for Regina to come to him, to hug him back.  “I’m sorry I took so long today,” he says, and Regina still has that face of wonder on.  “But we got you good stuff for dinner.”

Ruby takes a step forward, offers a shy smile.  “I gotta head back to the rest of my shift in ten minutes, but, I figured we could talk a minute?”

Something in the way Ruby’s smiling—not hazy-happy like before, but still gentle, like she doesn’t want to spook Regina, like she’s trying to say something with just the lines of her face—makes Emma reach out for Henry, nudge him towards her office.  “We’ll hang out for a little bit.  Gimme a heads up when you’re ready?”  She says it to Ruby but keeps looking at Regina, whose gaze comes back to Henry every few seconds like she doesn’t really believe he’s there, like she has to check to see if he’s a trick of the light.  Ruby nods, passes the food into the cell along with the cutlery sleeve and settles into one of the chairs.

Henry gives Regina one last glance and smile and then heads into Emma’s office, immediately starts rifling through her drawers.  “The lighters?” he asks when she comes in, not looking up.

“What makes you think I keep confiscated things in my desk?”

“Because walking over to the storage room is too much effort?”

Smart ass.  She comes left around her desk and unlocks the top drawer of the back filing cabinet, paws through the cheap Bic lighters until she gets to a heavier imitation Zippo.  “You gonna tell me what you need this for?”

“You’ll see in a minute.”

“You gonna tell me anything about your day?” she asks, still not turning from the file cabinet.

Henry shuffles behind her, takes a few retreating steps.  “I talked to Archie.”

“And swindled him out of ten bucks to go buy something that I’m assuming I will also see in a minute.”

He laughs, a little, and sits in one of the visitor chairs.  “Yeah.”

“If you want to tell me anything about talking to him, I’ll listen.”  It’s so much easier to say these things when she’s flipping the lighter open and shut and doesn’t have to actually make eye contact.  “Not that I’m saying you have to.  But… you know.  If you feel like it.”

Henry’s silent for long enough to make her look up to meet his eyes, and for a moment she wishes she’d left it alone.  The energy’s gone out of him again; he looks tired again, uncertain again.  “Not yet,” he says softly.

She nods, closes the filing cabinet and holds up the lighter.  “It’s been a minute. Can I know your nefarious plans now?”

And then he’s smiling again, shaking his head with just enough smugness to make Emma relax.  “Nope.”

 

* * *

 

Henry waits until Regina’s finished eating before he kneels in front of the cell and pulls two pillar candles in glass holders out of the pockets of his coat.  They’re tall and off-white and Emma’s half ashamed that she didn’t realize his pockets were _that_ full, but she’s more confused, because it’s not like they turn the lights out on Regina and even if they do, she’s pretty sure Regina’s not afraid of the dark.

But from the look on Regina’s face—all warmth, all love, all heartbreak—it means something big.  It means Henry’s better than good.  “How did you get these, Henry?” she asks, voice as soft and sweet as when she tells Emma his stories.

“I gave Father Gabe ten dollars and he said I could bring them to you, as long as I promised to bring you to Mass next week,” Henry explains, and moves both candles until they’re positioned at the midpoint of the cell, still on his side of the bars.  Then he takes the lighter, struggles to flick the wheel hard enough to get a flame up.  After three tries, he starts to press his lips together in frustration, and Emma takes a tentative step forward.  She doesn’t know what this is about, but she knows she needs permission to step into this.

Henry looks to Regina, and Regina looks at her like she’s telling his stories, nods just once.  Emma kneels next to Henry, thumbs the wheel hard and holds it until the flame climbs past the lid.  Henry points to the candle on the left, and Emma picks it up, tilts it sideways to be able to angle the flame in.  When it takes, it flares for a millisecond, pops softly; Henry wraps both hands around the glass and sets it down exactly where he had it before.  “This one’s for Welo,” he says, and reaches through the bars to hold Regina’s hand for a second.  “And this one’s for your mom.”

For a moment, it feels like none of them breathe.  Regina’s left hand tightens around Henry’s, and Emma makes sure to look at her, look right into her eyes, when she presses the lighter into her palm.

 

* * *

 

Regina, of course, is the only one who remembers the kid has to take his medicine, so they pick themselves up at a quarter to ten and pull their coats on.  The way Henry explains it, blowing out the candles just isn’t done, so Emma moves them to the corner window well in her office, pulls the blinds up so Regina can see them from her cell.

They’re both quiet on the walk back to the apartment, and they almost make it to the door of the building in silence, but just as they pass the alley between the sporting goods store and their building, Emma hears the clink of bottles and what sounds like scraping plastic.  “Go on up, Henry,” she instructs, and unlocks the front door for him.  “Lemme just check this out, and I’ll be right up, okay?”

He nods, gets through the door and then comes right out, barreling into her to give her a hug.  “Thanks,” is all he says, but she gets it, gives herself fifteen seconds to hold tight to him.

When the door closes behind him, she unsnaps her holster, keeps her palm pressed to the grip of the pistol but doesn’t draw.  A flashlight would help right about now, but she’s never been one to win employee of the year and probably isn’t ever going to be.  Crab-stepping into the alley, she calls out.  “Anybody here?”

“Emma?”

It’s David’s voice, and she relaxes, snaps the holster shut again.  “David, what are you—“ and she cuts herself off when she steps into view of the faintly-lit portion of the alley.  David’s sitting on one of the crates from the other night with a six-pack next to him and exhaustion all through his body.  She doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, she really doesn’t, but—he was taking care of her _kid_.  “Do this often?” she asks, tries to keep her voice casual.

He blinks at her, sighs.  “Only when I’ve really screwed up.  Or—Nolan did.  David Nolan did this when he fucked up.”

She deflates, comes and sits on the crate next to him.  Now that she’s closer, she can see that all the Blue Moons are still capped, except for the one in David’s hand.  When he sees her looking, he picks one up and holds it out to her.

She knows a peace offering when she sees it, takes it without saying a word and uses the teeth of one of her keys to pop the top rather than have to worry about her gloves.  “There are warmer places to drink, you know.”

“Not on Sundays.”

“I meant the apartment.”

“Not today.”

She isn’t sure what he means by that, so she waits.

It takes him until she’s a third of the way through her beer before he says anything else.  “I’m sorry.”  He takes a deep breath, leans forward with his elbows on his knees.  “I’m sorry.  About yesterday and Henry, and this morning, and this whole mess.  I’m sorry I can’t fix this for you.”

She keeps her eyes on the asphalt, because if she looks at him and sees him giving her that _babygirl_ look, she might completely lose it.

“The first thing I ever killed was a dragon.  Not the _first_ thing, I guess—I’d fished and hunted, and had to slaughter chickens every now and again, but—the first _kill it to kill_ thing, you know?  I was a novice and a moron and I had a whole team of knights with me and I got three of them killed.  I got them killed because I was a novice and they had to be assigned to protect me, and if I got them killed, maybe I killed them.  Maybe they were my first kills and not the dragon.”

It shouldn’t be comforting, but the idea that somebody else is losing it, too—the idea that someone who is maybe _like her_ , someway, is losing their shit too—somehow makes things a little bit better.  So she stretches her arm out, clinks the bottom of her beer against his.  “My first was a dragon, too,” she offers.  And then she amends, because she was listening, “I mean, the first kill it to kill.  Well, no, okay, first kill anything, because fishing and hunting and chicken slaughter, just… _no_ , but… you know.”

David watches her, expressionless, through her babbling.  And then, after a beat of silence, he smiles at her, just for her, and it’s easy to smile back.

 

* * *

 

Henry’s still awake when she comes to bed, although he looks like he’ll be down for the count within half an hour.  “I forgot a candle,” he says, as soon as she’s settled under the blankets.

“Huh?”

“For Daniel.  I forgot a candle for Daniel.”

She freezes.

“Did… did she tell you about him?”

Emma thinks of the Daniel night—weeks after it happened, because Regina struggled to say his name—and of what Regina said and didn’t say.  She said he’d been forced back.  She said they’d desecrated his body, _defiled_ him, fucked with his soul and twisted him up.  She said he’d been in so much pain.  She said they made her sweet, gentle, all-love Daniel violent, and foul, and full of darkness.  She didn’t say who and she didn’t say why.  She didn’t say _goodbye_ , or _I’m sorry_ , or _we can find a way, let’s try_.  She said she set him free.

“Yeah,” Emma whispers.  “Kinda.”

Henry’s breathing is shaky, and when she looks over his eyes are pinched shut.  “She never talked about him, either.”

He says it so small, so softly.  Emma wishes like hell that Regina could tell her own story to the one person who needs to hear it.  “I don’t think she knows how to, kid.”

“I don’t know how to ask.”

She doesn’t know what to say, takes too long trying to figure something out, because when Henry turns onto his side, it’s with a soft _whuff_ that he only makes when he’s asleep.  His spine presses against her side and this—it’s such a luxury, to know what sounds he makes in his sleep, to be able to turn and _see_ him after ten years of pushing every question out of her mind.  

It’s a luxury and yet every moment with him is stained with Regina, because for every question she’s ever had, Regina has the answers.  Did he do this with her, when he was small?  How long since he’d been trusting enough to sleep by her side?  Did it make her ribs ache and spread, the way it makes Emma’s?  Did the weight of his small body feel like gravity to her, too?

Emma wants to claw every lingering note of citrus from her senses—citrus and ginger, Regina and Regina and Regina—but instead she just listens to their son breathe, listens and watches and says _thank you_ over and over again, until she forgets how to form the words.

* * *

 

“I don’t know how to save you.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“I don’t want you to die.”

Regina smiles at her, soft and kind, and Emma wants to shake her until she comes _back_.  “That’s kind of you.”

“Tell me how to fix this,” Emma whispers, but Regina just shakes her head.

“This is the fix.”

“ _No_.”

“Yes.”  And Regina just looks at her, and waits, and Emma has nothing to offer anymore.  “Tell me a story?”

“A story?”

“Yes.”

Emma looks at her, and looks at her, and looks at her, and can’t refuse.  She starts talking—slowly, because talking about the desert is something she doesn’t do—about what Arizona looked like in May when she was seventeen and stupid in love and what it looked like in June when she was seventeen and so so alone and then what it was like to drive north on 93 in April.  How different the desert looked after a year and incarceration and childbirth and betrayal and how even the air felt empty and how that somehow, someway, felt like hope.

Regina doesn’t interrupt or drift off or anything besides look straight at her with those dark, dark eyes shining in the sunlight.  When Emma—hesitant and awkward and frightened beyond logic—lets their hands brush before reaching for a sugar packet to fiddle with, Regina reaches forward to rest her fingertips on the bones of Emma’s wrist, lets her keep fidgeting but gives her something to hold on to anyway and—

Regina’s the only one who gets it.  The only other one who knows.

* * *

 

She and Henry hit the diner for breakfast around 7:30, not saying much on the walk over or when they’re sitting across from each other with a plate of pancakes apiece.  Ruby sneaks Henry a can of Redi-Whip even though Emma’s mostly sure that Granny banned the stuff last year, and there’s a certain concentration on his face while he adds a smiley face to his chocolate chip pancakes that lets her know the silence isn’t bad, just… necessary.

Things feel better today.  Today they’ll get answers, and part of her, a big huge solid part that she doesn’t really know how to trust yet, knows that David genuinely wants this to work out, believes that he’ll do his best to make things _good_.  And that means they won’t sentence Regina to death.  Emma can make anything work, any other situation, as long as Regina stays breathing.  As long as she stays alive.

When Granny hands over the paper bag with Regina’s breakfast, Henry takes the lead, bundling up again quickly and tugging Emma out of the diner before she’s zipped up her jacket.  His eagerness is faintly contagious; she picks up her pace and catches up with him just outside the station.  He’s got this look on his face, his nose scrunched up and mouth slanted, like he doesn’t know how to get something out.  “Spit it out, kid, you just made me jog on a full stomach, I’ve got nothing but resentment for you right now.”

A smile brightens his eyes, just for a second.  “Can I—is it okay if it’s just me and Mom, for a little bit?”

She smiles at him, as kindly as she knows how, and hands over the food.  “Text me when it’s cool for me to come in?”  He nods, and she ruffles up his hair because she can.  “And don’t steal her food, okay, if you’re hungry we can get you more stuff.”

“ _Duh_ , Emma,” he groans, but smiles before he ducks into the station.

She laughs to herself, shakes her head and turns towards the town green and the bench she’d claimed on Saturday, but she doesn’t even make it across the street before the station door bangs open again.  Turning around and reaching for a sword in the same movement, she freezes when she sees Henry barreling towards her, face full of panic and confusion.  “Henry?  What’s—“

“She’s _gone_ , Emma, she’s gone and there aren’t any guards and the cell’s cleaned out and open!”

As soon as she processes, she sprints past him and into the station, and sure enough, the bullpen is empty and the cells are empty and there’s no sign that Regina was ever there.  The extra lock on the door is gone, her blankets are gone, the folding chairs are back in the stack under the break table.  The only things to prove that Regina was ever there are the two pillar candles in the window of the office, burned out but still real.

“What does it mean?”  Henry’s voice comes from behind her, small and scared, and she steps out of the empty cell, just looks at him for a minute.

“It means they brought her over to Town Hall already,” she says quietly.  “They brought her over already.”

He steps closer hesitantly, and she can’t tell what he’s thinking, can’t read what his wide eyes and trembling hands mean.  “But—Grams and Gramps were just waking up when we left.  There’s no way they’re there already.”

He could be right.  Snow and David had just been brushing their teeth when she and Henry left.  They could have gotten ready and gone straight over, but it’s just as likely that they didn’t.  And if David isn’t there—if the council is dealing with Regina without David there, without Snow there—

A loud click-thump catches her attention, and she looks up to see the double doors swinging closed again, Henry nowhere in sight.  “Shit,” she hisses, and takes off after him.  The kid’s a decent runner for a bookworm, but she manages to grab him by the hood of his coat just in front of Gold’s shop, tugs him back and wraps her arms around him to hold him in place.

He fights her, and she’s unprepared for it, so his frantic attempts to get loose knock them both to the ground.  “No, no, let me _go_!” he shouts, and she takes an elbow to the gut but holds on.

“Henry—Henry, stop—“

“Let me go!  I have to ask him—Emma, let _go!_ ”

“Ask who—“ and she freezes, all her muscles tightening up when she realizes exactly where they are.  “Henry, _no_.”

“He can fix this—“

“No!” she shouts, and finally manages to get some leverage, turns him around to face her and holds him in place by the sides of his coat.  “No.  You don’t go to him for _anything_.  You don’t offer him _anything_.  Are you listening to me?  You don’t go _near_ him.  You hear me?”

Henry is crying.  He’s crying and shaking his head and whispering, “No, no, no,” over and over again.  “You promised you’d save her.  This is the only way.  I have to save her, Emma, I have to make a deal, it’s the only way.”

“ _No_ ,” she whispers, and tries to hug him but he pushes her away.

“You _promised_.”

“I won’t let you make a deal with him, Henry.  And if your mom knew—“

“So _you_ make it!  Make a deal, whatever he wants, just give it to him—Emma, _please_!”

He’s sobbing openly and trying to twist away from her and how the hell is she supposed to explain to him that she can’t make a deal because she already knows what Gold wants and she has no fucking idea how to give it to him and she promised she would _think_ and somehow she knows thinking means _don’t ever give him power over you, not for anything, never again_ , how is she supposed to—

Make a deal.  _Make a deal_.

She focuses in on Henry again, reaches up to cup his face, wipe some of the tears from his cheeks.  “Listen to me,” she says softly, and when he shakes his head, she holds tighter.  “I keep my promises.  You know I keep my promises.”

“So _save her_!”

“I’m gonna,” she says, and repeats it, stronger.  “I’m gonna.  But I need you to listen to me and trust me right now.  Right now, Henry.  Are you listening?”  He nods, and his crying slows down.  “I need you to stay away from Mr. Gold.  Right now and forever.  And right now, I need you to go to Archie’s.  And if Archie isn’t there, you go to the diner and you stay as close to Granny as possible, okay?  And you wait until your mom and I come to get you.  Understand?”

His crying stops completely, and he stares at her with wide, wide red eyes.  “You’re gonna save her?”

She nods, grips his shoulders tightly.  “Right now.  But I need to know you are safe and not doing anything that puts her in jeopardy.  So you gotta go.”

“You’re gonna save her?” he repeats, and she tries a grin, is pleased when it takes authentically.

“That’s what saviors do, right?”

* * *

 

When she kicks open the door to the assembly room—because if she learned anything from Henry’s damn book, it’s that entrances matter—none of the council members are sitting down yet.  Three of them, including David, are clustered over by a Keurig on a side table.  Snow and three others are in various stages of getting to their seats—seven chairs at three tables, shaped in a U.  And in the middle of the room, a good ten feet from the council set-up, is a single heavy ladderback chair, and Regina sitting shackled in it.  

The chair can’t be more than two feet from where Cora fell.  Emma looks and sees red and wet and grey and _squish_ and every instinct in her body says to get Regina away from there.

Movement to her left: Tweedledee rushes her like it’s flag football and not a dumb move.  She smirks, can’t help it, and points Excalibur at him, watches as he pulls up short and comes to a halt.  “Smart boy.  Who’s got the keys?”  His eyes flick to the locksmith—Daedalus, and she nods, takes two steps forward.

“You can’t be here, Sheriff.”

She rolls her eyes, looks to where the voice came from and isn’t entirely surprised to see Mitchell Hermann, standing near the head of the U tables and frowning at her.  “Question one,” she starts, raising her voice so it fills the room, and walks up to Regina’s chair.  The manacle chain is looped around one of the rails of the chair back; the same goes for the shackles at her ankles.  “How, exactly, do you plan on getting all of the townspeople to actually pay their property taxes?”

Regina looks like hell, puffy-eyed and dry-lipped and possibly ashen-faced.  The fluorescent lights aren’t helping her any.  “What are you doing?” she whispers, but Emma ignores her.

“You,” she says to Daedalus, pointing at him with the sword.  “Uncuff her.”

“Absolutely not!”  This time, it’s the florist, stomping forward from the coffee maker.

Emma rolls her eyes.  “Wasn’t a request,” she tells Daedalus.

Maurice keeps going.  “You have no authority in—“

“Authority?” she echoes, and turns on him.  “Who the hell put _you_ in charge?  I remember getting all of your votes.  I sure as _shit_ don’t remember voting for you.”  Maurice pulls up short, and she keeps her eyes on him for as long as she can before turning back to Daedalus.  “I said, uncuff her.”

“No,” is all she gets from him, but he’s not hiding the fact that the keys are clipped to his belt loop, so she keeps the sword up, moves in and takes them off of him, retreats and gestures with the sword to tell him to move over to where Tweedledee is still standing, with Tweedledum two paces behind him.

“What are you doing?” Regina whispers again when Emma comes up behind the chair and starts working on the manacles.

“Choosing Henry,” she hisses back, and lifts her head.  “Second question.  When you completely fail at getting everyone to pay their taxes, what’s the game plan for outsmarting the IRS and the FBI when they come investigating?”

The room is completely still for a moment, and Emma looks over to where Snow is, completely still next to a chair with a cup of coffee steaming on the table in front of her.  There’s nothing but shock on Snow’s face, and for reasons she doesn’t understand, it _hurts_ , right between her lungs.

There’s no time for that, not now.  “Not so good with the Q&A format, huh?  Gotta tell you, kinda necessary for small town governing,” she drawls, and when Regina huffs something just below hearing range, she can’t help but grin.

“We are their monarchs. They will comply,” says the woman next to Mitchell—the only person she doesn’t recognize, so probably Helena.

“Yeah?  Did the teachers comply with orders to go back to work, or is Henry hanging out at the library all day because he’s a delinquent?”  The woman stiffens and tries to hide it, but she looks over to Mitchell and Emma doesn’t miss it.  “And fair warning, say _delinquent_ and you answer to both of us.

“The schooling situation is separate from the taxes issue, Sheriff, and to be frank, they are both above your pay grade. Your concern is unwarranted.”

She’s gotten one wrist cuff open and Regina pulls her arm forward, rotates her wrist a couple of times, and then twists in the chair to look back at Emma. Emma doesn’t look up until her other wrist is free and she can hand the keys over for Regina to take care of her own feet.  “What do you think is going to happen if a bunch of IRS pencil pushers roll into town and start poking their noses into the records for the past twenty eight years?  You think it’s all gonna turn up roses or you think they’ll dig up some dirt?  ‘Cause me, I’m thinking dirt.  I’m thinking enough dirt to justify hauling at least half the town up to Portland and oh, wait, remind me again what happens when someone gets dragged across the town line?”

A heavy _thud-clink_ behind her tells her that Regina’s gotten at least one leg free.  Tweedledee and Tweedledum are trying to flank her and move in; Regina needs to hurry up.

“What’s your _point_ , Sheriff?” Mother Superior—or the Blue Fairy, now—demands from next to David.  

Emma hears the keys clatter to the floor, turns to keep her back to Regina and put at least one of the Tweedles in her line of sight.  “My point is, you either have _no idea_ of the shit about to rain down on you, or you don’t care.  My point is that I can cross that line without a problem, and my son can cross that line without a problem, so I don’t _have_ to care about what happens to anybody else.  But I’m the one who knows what it’s like dealing with feds and I’m the one who knows that the best way is to never do it in the first place.”

“Emma,” Regina hisses, and the keys knock against the shackles loudly.

Emma ignores her, again.  “So let’s make a deal.  You all like to make deals, right?  I’ll give you something you need, and you give me something I want.”

“Emma, _no_ ,” Regina says, voice hoarse and horrified, and the shackles finally hits the ground.  

Emma looks at her, extends a hand to help her stand up, and when the surge of acid-bright energy stops overwhelming her, she holds out the hilt of Excalibur with a soft smile.  “Trust me just a little bit longer,” she murmurs, and closes Regina’s fingers around the sword hilt.  “And keep the sharp end of that away from me.”

“Name your terms,” comes a growl from behind Snow, and Emma narrows her eyes at the man as he moves forward.  He’s long-haired and wide-jawed and wearing wide-cuffed leather gloves, but his eyes are bright and kind and familiar.  Midas, she realizes when his gloves glint in the light.

Carnwennan is still sheathed on her back, but now that she’s given Regina a weapon, Tweedledee and Tweedledum are slinking back to stand with Daedalus.  There’s something to be said for reputation.  “You let her go and you leave her alone, and I’ll make sure every single person in town pays up and on time.  And if there’s any holdouts, I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure there’s no outside involvement.”

“Absolutely not.”  Mother Superior, arms crossed and body rigid, shakes her head.  “We will not grant the Evil Queen _mercy_ for the possibility of your half-hearted efforts—“

“She needs to be brought to _justice_ ,” Maurice sputters.

Emma laughs.  Throws back her head and laughs, and it does exactly what she wanted it to: scares the everloving _shit_ out of them.  Maurice takes three steps back.  “Justice?” she echoes, and laughs again.  “Okay.  So your goon squad’s gonna go make some more unlawful arrests, right?”  She gestures towards Daedalus and the Tweedles.  “Next up is Gold?  Oh, wait.”  She turns her head to look at David, and he winces, but steps forward anyway.  “You can’t, because _you_ made a deal that lets him get away with _everything_ and gets you _nothing_ in return.”

The room is silent.

“Right.  How about Albert Spencer—I’m sorry, _King_ George?  He murdered and maimed Billy.  Or, how about Jefferson?  He assaulted, kidnapped and drugged me _and_ Mary Margaret, but he’s walking around a free man and word is, he somehow got his daughter back, too.”

Next to David, Mother Superior shifts uncomfortably.  Emma can’t see a wand in her hand, but that doesn’t make her any less dangerous, so she reaches for Regina’s wrist and pushes her back, away from the chair, behind her own body, covers the move with a taunt.  “Or—how about you, flower boy?  You tried to wipe your own daughter’s memory, push her over the town line by force.  Kind of like attempted murder, isn’t it?  Eliminating a whole person from the face of the earth?  So why don’t you come on down, sit right here for a few days?”  She jerks her chin towards the empty chair, and Maurice drops his gaze.

“This is ridiculous,” Helena says, and Emma tightens her grip on Regina, takes a deep breath through the spike in energy.

“No, _this_ isn’t ridiculous.  What’s ridiculous is that you’re all so busy deciding whether she lives or dies that you’re letting this town collapse in on itself.  You’re supposed to be the kings and queens and leaders around here, but apparently you don’t give a single fuck about the actual people out there.  You put the town comptroller on _babysitting_ duty for a week.  Has anybody even gotten paid?  Are they bartering down at the grocery store or is there a widespread theft problem you’re sitting on, too?”  Behind her, Regina makes a small sound of frustration, but it’s almost inaudible with all the shuffling of the council members.  “So let’s make a deal.  Sell yourselves out to me.  I’m not so bad, am I?  I’m not prancing around, cackling and asking for your unborn children, am I?”

Snow knocks over her coffee.  David looks at her helplessly, but no one moves.

“Come on,” Emma continues, and keeps her voice low and soft and smooth.  “Best deal you’re ever gonna get.  A bonafide savior as your law keeper, for the bargain price of one pardon.”

“ _Her_ pardon,” Mitchell snaps.  “Do you have any idea what she’s _done_?”

“Murdered.  Manipulated.  Stolen,” she lists, and thinks _Graham_ and _rape_ and thinks _Leopold_ and _marriage_ and bites the inside of her cheek.  “Betrayed.  Assaulted.  And there’s not a person in this room who hasn’t done at least three of those things right along with her.”

“There is a difference, Princess—“ the Blue Fairy starts. 

Emma grimaces, releases Regina’s wrist, unsheathes Carnwennan and glares flatly down the blade at the fairy.  “No, there really isn’t.”

“Do you have _any_ idea what you’re doing?” Regina whispers, practically in her ear.

“Do me a favor and shut up?” Emma mutters back.

“She’s right,” David says quietly, and steps forward again.  “None of us are innocent.  And we need her help.”

“Not at this price,” Maurice mutters.

“Trust me, you don’t want me as your enemy,” Emma warns, and she’s sure Regina _hmphs_.  “You don’t take this deal, and the first thing I’ll do is tell every single person in this town that any tax money they pay is going into your personal accounts and not to the state.  You’ll have a revolt on your hands and the IRS at your heels and right when it gets as bad as it can get?  I’ll take my kid and leave town, and let this whole place burn.  And that’s if you just banish her.  _And_ if I’m feeling kind.”

“You wouldn’t lie,” Midas says quietly.

“Wouldn’t I?”

“They wouldn’t believe you,” Helena scoffs.

And Emma smiles.  “I’m the _Savior_.  You know what bullshit people will believe if it comes from a savior?”

“You would leave?” Snow whispers.

Emma looks at her, and she feels the weight of Regina’s hand on her back—a warning, but she doesn’t know of what.  “I won’t keep Henry around people incapable of mercy,” she says, keeps her voice steady and pushes aside the gnawing churning ache in her stomach.  “Especially not if it means keeping him away from his mother, too.”

“Don’t do this,” Regina whispers.  “Please don’t do this.”

“Deal,” Midas says suddenly, and tension she didn’t even realize was coiling up in her back unwinds in a rush.

“ _What_ ,” Maurice roars, and Emma reaches back to grab on to Regina, keep her back and safe, and for a moment she’s just flailing at the air until Regina’s fingers dig into the sleeve of her jacket, until she’s there and solid and real.

“I remember the riots at the beginning of George’s reign.  Do you?” Midas spits back.  “She’s right.  We can’t—we don’t know anything about this world and how it works, not really.  And people _will_ follow her.  If she says pay, they’ll pay.”

“This is… extortion,” the Blue Fairy says, and her indignation almost makes Emma laugh.

“Shouldn’t you be used to it by now?” she asks, and when that small, smug face pales and turns, just slightly, to check Snow’s reaction, it almost feels like a win.

“This is _not_ how we conduct affairs of state,” Helena says, eyes narrow and mouth pinched.  “There are laws that she has broken both in the old world and in this world—“

“Old world’s gone.  And in this world, you have a burden of proof to meet, and I’m telling you right now, ‘it was magic’ doesn’t cut it.”

“Deal,” Mitchell sighs out, and sinks into his chair.

Maurice throws up his hands, rounds on David.  “Can’t you control your offspring?” he demands, and David actually _smiles_ before casually tossing his half cup of coffee into Maurice’s chest and following it up with a left hook to the nose.

“ _David_ ,” Midas shouts, and Emma isn’t sure if she wants to laugh or scream.  She won’t look back to see if Regina’s laughing, won’t look back to see if there’s a smile at last—but God, she hopes so, she hopes so.  “Later,” Midas adds, softer, and Maurice—on the floor with coffee soaking through his shirt and a trickle of blood from his nose—sputters in protest.  “Get up, Maurice.”

To his credit, David offers a hand to help him, but Maurice shoves him back and gets up on his own.  “Once a peasant—“

“Hold your tongue, Maurice,” Snow murmurs, all softness and patience, but that hard, hard look is back in her eyes and in the tension at her jaw.

“Stop this, Emma,” Regina’s whispering.  “Just—just leave, now, and they’ll all pretend like this didn’t happen, and—“

“ _No_ ,” she says, too loudly, but no one hears her over Maurice’s next words.

“I would,” he snarls, pulling his shirt away from his body with a grimace, “if it wasn’t clear that your wayward bitch of a daughter is playing rebellious teen and you’re _falling for it_.”

David practically growls, but there’s a look from Snow and he stays still, fists clenched at his side.  “Our daughter isn’t playing anything,” Snow says, and she sounds so sad, so sad.  “She’s doing the right thing.”

It shouldn’t hurt this much, hearing those words.  It really shouldn’t.

“No,” Regina whispers, and her voice is shredded.

“Deal,” Snow says, and her eyes are wet.

Emma grabs Regina’s hand and goes straight to the door.

* * *

 

They actually make it past the bank before Regina rounds on her, which is a whole half block further than Emma expected to go without being hit.  And Regina doesn’t even hit her—she presses the hilt of Excalibur into her shoulder and pushes, like she’s trying to get both the sword and Emma away from her, like she wants nothing to do with any of it.  “What the _hell_ were you thinking?”

It’s actually a relief, to have this happen now, to not have to sit with more of Regina’s eerie silence.  So Emma grabs the hilt of the sword before Regina lets go, stands there with a weapon in each hand and deadpans, “Honestly, how much I’m craving a vanilla malt.”

Regina blinks at her, and Emma takes advantage of her surprise to lower her head and twist to sheathe both swords.  “I told you—“

“You told me _nothing_ ,” Emma cuts her off, and it comes out just slightly too harsh because Regina’s in her face in the next moment, all fire and fury, and she can’t even be upset about it.

“I _told you_ that you need to think, and that you need to put Henry first, and your next step was to piss off the seven most influential people left in this town and put yourself at their disposal!”

“And I told you that you’re not dying!”

Regina sneers at her, and God, this shouldn’t be such a relief.  “ _Imbecile_.  How else do you think you get out of a deal with Rumplestiltskin?”

Emma freezes.  “What?”

Regina shoves at her again, both palms to her shoulders, but doesn’t advance.  “Contracts with Rumplestiltskin are rendered null and void if either party dies by another person’s hand.  _Interminable interference_.”

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“I _told you_ —“

“What’s the price?” she whispers, and when Regina—no, no, no, Regina just kind of crumples in on herself right there in the middle of the sidewalk and no, no, no, no.  _No_.  “Henry?”

Regina won’t look at her, won’t open her eyes, and Emma—Emma reaches out to her and then hesitates, hands hovering just under her elbows, because she can’t put hands on a woman who wanted her death to be _worth something_ —oh, Jesus, she can’t, she can’t, she can’t.

An odd, syncopated _skritch-skritch-click_ from behind Regina makes them both freeze and look and when Emma catches the shine off the top of that fucking walking stick, she grabs Regina by the arms and pulls her to her, pushes her behind her, away from Gold.  “Get the fuck back, Gold,” Emma snarls, and he chuckles.

“Good morning to you, too, Sheriff.  Your Majesty, you’re looking… delightfully alive.”

And it’s clear, before Regina even says it: “You knew this would happen.”

Gold shifts his shoulders in a vaguely self-satisfied way.  “I knew the chances.  I must say, I didn’t expect such a brilliant performance, Sheriff.  There’s hope for you yet.”  And then he smiles, wide and wicked, and leans forward just slightly.  “Let me know when to expect you, Regina.  Give me a chance to put the kettle on.”

All she can focus on as he walks away is that damn _skritch-skritch-click_.  It’s all she can hold in her mind, because he _knew_ , and of course he knew, who would put in a death clause if they didn’t know death wasn’t on the table, of course he knew, how could both of them have been so _stupid_ —

There’s no time for thinking.  This, right now, this moment—this is what Emma knows better than anything else in the world.  “You have to go,” she chokes out, and Regina finally looks at her and those dark, dark eyes are so devastating—  “You have to go and pack your bags and then the two of you have to _go_.”

“What?”

This time, she does put hands on Regina—grabs her at the elbows and squeezes lightly, just enough to get Regina to look at her.  Just _look_.  “You and Henry.  You pack your shit and you get in the car and you _go_.”

Regina looks at her, and looks at her, and shakes her head and pushes at her.  “You’ve lost your mind—“

“No.  You can leave, and he can leave, and Gold can’t, and none of those council fucks can, so you and Henry will leave and start fresh and you will give him a normal life somewhere, and—“

“And you?”  It’s just a whisper and she hates it.  

“What about me?” and no, it’s not her fishing for anything, it’s—she’s not the important one here, this is about Regina and Henry and they’re the only ones who matter now. Ever.

“Would you—stay?”

She thinks of David drinking a beer and throwing coffee and Snow making tea and crying and then of Henry making her a sandwich and sharing his fries and she feels sick inside, sick all over.  “Gold will—you know he’ll lash out.”

It feels like the wrong answer, even though she knows it’s the right thing, but the way Regina looks at her, the way everything in those dark, dark eyes just burns her up inside makes her think that she doesn’t know right from wrong at all.  “So you would stay.”

“I’d—I’d visit, as often as—“

“You’d sacrifice yourself and Henry’s happiness—“

“His happiness doesn’t depend on _me_ , Regina.”

It’s the wrong answer again and she’s starting to hate the way Regina’s looking at her, like this is a personal betrayal.  Doesn’t she get it?  Doesn’t she see that Emma’s just trying to do right by—by _both_ of them?

“You really think,” Regina says, in that quiet voice that’s heavy with tears, “that there’s any chance for him to be happy without you?”

She flinches and hates, hates, hates how much this feels like the end of everything.  How they’re standing here lost and confused and deciding their son’s whole future _right now_.  “You really want to risk his life on a couple crappy afternoons with a biological parent?” she says, and the words claw at her throat as she says them, rip her up from the inside out.

Regina says, “No,” and Emma thinks she should be relaxing, but _no_ just means that she’s going to have to say goodbye and she doesn’t have that in her.  She can’t—she doesn’t have that in her.  “I won’t risk his life.  We’ll draft a custody agreement, and you’ll sign it, and you will go.  You and Henry.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind.”

But Regina just shakes her head, takes a half step in towards Emma and—no, she won’t ever have it in her to say goodbye.  Not ever.  “The only way to keep Henry safe is to get him out of town.  You are the only person who knows anything about the outside world.  The only way to keep Gold pacified is to give him what he wants.  I am the only person who can do that.  This is how it has to be.”

“I’m not leaving you alone in this fucking town, Regina, and you’re an idiot if you think Henry would be okay with that for even a minute,” Emma snaps, and she wants to _shake_ her because why is she being so stupid and self-sacrificing?  “You don’t get to leave him.  Remember?  You don’t get to do that.”

“He needs you, Emma,” Regina whispers, and Emma wants to cry.

“Don’t send him away,” she whispers back, and tries to tell the truth but she can’t, she can’t.  “Don’t send him away,” she says again, and feels stinging in her eyes.

“Mom?”

Before Emma can even process the cry, Henry’s barreling into Regina, wrapping his arms around her waist and saying a million things into the green henley Regina’s still wearing, and she’s gonna have to talk to the kid about fucking obedience, at some point, but right now—right now he’s looking up at his mom and smiling like he’s still the boy who knocked on her door last October.  Like there’s hope for all of them yet.

And Regina— _Regina._ Emma doesn’t know if she’s ever seen anything quite as devastating as the relief and joy and fear and love all mixed up in those dark, dark eyes.  Regina kisses Henry’s forehead and looks at him like she’ll never get enough of his smile and if Emma ever doubted what she would do for this, for these two, she knows now.

So when Henry, all-love-Henry, pulls back from Regina just slightly and wrinkles his nose and says, “Mom?  You kind of, um… reek,” Emma laughs, bright and true, and smiles for them both.

“You are a little ripe,” she teases, and feels the tears receding.

“A shower would be nice,” Regina admits, and Emma doesn’t miss the way her arms tighten around Henry.

So she smiles, soft and simple, and nods.  “Let’s get you two home,” she says, and there’s hope, there’s hope, there’s hope for them yet.  She can see it in those dark, dark eyes, in the corners of that mouth.  There’s hope; Regina’s smiling.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks to Kate, Lynn and Dex for constant feedback. Also thanks to everyone who's ever contributed to meta discussions, especially Eshu & Ana; all of your thoughts have made this piece so much richer than it would have been without you.
> 
> Here ends Part II. All of your feedback has been cherished. Part III, _Persefone_ , will take some time to churn out--it may be closer to 2014 before I'm able to delve into that volume with the passion it deserves. Thanks for sticking with me through this one; I hope most of you will come back for the next piece.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus material:  
> Thematic soundtrack: Dear Ms. Lonelyhearts, Cold War Kids.  
> Tonal soundtrack: Symphony No. 11, Shostakovich.


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